Ms. Julieanna Richardson went from broadcast and television executive to the founder of an organization dedicated to preserving Black History. She now runs one of the largest organizations dedicated to the location and preservation of African American historical archives, stories, and history: The History Makers. UrbanFaith contributor Maina Mwaura sat down with her to learn about the Historymakers and get her insight on our world and history today.
A photo of the many hands involved in the making of Jack Daniel’s Whiskey, including George Green, the son of Uncle Nearest, circa 1904. (Photo provided/Newfields)
The following interview is with Fawn Weaver, Founder of Uncle Nearest and UrbanFaith Contributor Maina Mwaura, about her new book Love & Whiskey. The views expressed here are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of UrbanFaith.
Maina: Why did you decide to write the book?
Fawn: The book is the reason I came to Lynchburg, Tennessee, in the first place. The story of Nearest Green and Jack Daniel is one of the greatest American stories the world needs to know, and it’s my great honor to have been able to tell it.
Maina: What did you learn that you didn’t already know about Nearest Green?
Fawn: When I first encountered this story, like most people, I knew absolutely nothing about Nearest Green. However, through my research, I’ve since discovered that he is the world’s first known African American master distiller, the teacher and mentor of Jack Daniel, and the only known master distiller for Jack Daniel Distillery No. 7.
Maina: What was the bond between Nearest Green and Jack Daniel?
Fawn: Jack was a young, white orphan who was mentored by and grew up learning from Nearest Green. When Jack was old enough to own his own business, he asked his mentor to be his first master distiller. I believe this to be one of the earliest examples of business allyship in America, a bond that continued for generations between the descendants of Nearest and Jack. Genuine backstories drive the American whiskey business, and it’s always about heritage.
Maina: Why do you think Uncle Nearest has resonated with its customers?
Fawn: Uncle Nearest was the first truly inclusive bourbon brand. Until our debut in 2017, bourbon marketing typically focused on one or two demographic groups. But we decided to tap into the ties that bind all humans: love, honor, and respect. When you look at our marketing and hear our team speak about our brand, those three words come up repeatedly. It turns out that if you bring together a marketing team that represents the full diversity of America and then market to all of America, it resonates. And, of course, we have the best story the bourbon world has ever known.
Maina: What one thing do you think will surprise readers about the book?
Fawn: Readers may be surprised by how openly I share about building Uncle Nearest and how my background and upbringing equipped me to face the onslaught of challenges in this industry. I’m very transparent about what it has taken to become who I am today and to build the company I’m known for now.
Maina: How did the book-writing process make you a better leader?
Fawn: I can’t say the book-writing process made me a better leader. What has made me a better leader is learning what my team needs and leaning into that as much as possible. However, the book has greatly inspired our team overall and serves as a constant reminder of our “why” today and moving forward.
Maina: What was Nearest Green’s spiritual background?
Fawn: We don’t know for certain. That said, his children and grandchildren attended Christian churches, so if they inherited their faith from Nearest, we can assume he was also Christian.
Maina: Did you say everything you wanted to in the book?
Fawn: Yes, I put everything into Love & Whiskey, so nothing remains untold. Anything new that I’ve learned since its publication will be included in an extended paperback version down the road.
Fawn Weaver 2021 – Photo Credit – Eric Ryan Anderson
Maina
Man, one of my favorite authors, I mean, I just want to be blunt with you. Every time I see you on Meet the Press, Eddie, I’m always like, he is dead on about something. I don’t know where it comes from. So where were you when you said to yourself, “Self, I need to write a book [like] We Are The Leaders that We’ve been Looking For?”
Dr. Glaude
You know, this book is based on a set of lectures I delivered like in 2011. And I was so angry at that moment. Everybody was excited about the Obama presidency. And I was angry in some ways, doc, that people were reading Obama’s presidency as the fulfillment of the black freedom struggle. That that’s what the object of all that sacrifice was for, was to get a black man in the White House. And I just thought, that’s not true. What happened to love, what happened to justice, what happened to the moral dimension of the movement? I wanted to think through that. I wanted to figure out what were we relinquishing, what were we giving up in that moment. And then fast forward, all these years later, I returned to those lectures. And I returned to them because in some ways I had lost my footing. I was trying to figure things out because COVID had disrupted so much, I had lost two partners. I felt like I was unmoored, untethered as it were. And I knew these lectures were a moment when I was trying to usher in a new way of being for myself, a new way of thinking for myself, a new way of writing for myself. So I wanted to go back to that moment. And lo and behold, I saw what I was trying to do differently. So all of this happened in the summer of 2023. And I got to work. And then I submitted the manuscript to the editor at Harvard University Press and they were like, OMG, let’s get this out as soon as we can.
Maina
What would you say to people who feel the disillusionment of people who are going, “I don’t want to be the leader?”
Dr. Glaude
I think part of what I’m trying to argue is that when we outsource our responsibility for the house [of this country], when we say, well, I don’t want to pay the mortgage then we know what’s going to happen. And so we cannot outsource our responsibility for democracy any longer to so called prophets, to so called heroes, to politicians. We have to understand this is where Ella Baker, Miss Baker, is so important that we are our salvation in this instanc. Of course, that that doesn’t disregard one’s faith claims, but it’s what we do.And there’s a somewhat cliche at the heart of the book. And that is that if we are the leaders we’ve been looking for, then we got to become better people. We got to reach for higher forms of excellence. James Baldwin used to put it this way, the messiness of the world is often a reflection of the messiness of our interior lives. So if we don’t begin to do that hard work on becoming better people, then we can’t be the source of significant change. But I also should say this, doing the hard work of becoming a better human being must take place alongside of [and] within our ongoing effort to make a more just world. Because the world as it currently is organized gets in the way of us becoming better people. It’s almost like you’re rewarded to be selfish, you’re rewarded to be greedy, you’re rewarded to be mean spirited, you’re rewarded to be self-regarded. You’re not rewarded if you’re other regarded, if you’re not regarded if you have an I, thou relationship [with others as non-objects], you’re not regarded if you’re committed to justice, if you’re committed to the least of these, you see what I mean? If you’re maladjusted to an unjust world, you’re not rewarded. So we got to do the hard work of self-cultivation in pursuit of a more just world. That’s the heart of the book.
Maina
Which one of these people did you fall in love with the most? You’re taking some of the very, very best and you’re dropping them right in front of us and there are nuggets right in front of us. Which one did you go, “I am more in line with this leader.”
Dr. Glaude
It depends on what age you ask me. So when I was a young kid growing up in Mississippi, Dr. King meant everything. I remember checking out the album, show you how old I am. It was the vinyl of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It was the March on Washington. And I remember stopping it and learning it by memory from Mrs. Mitchell’s eighth grade history class. And Dr. King was so important to how I imagined myself. When I got to Morehouse, you’re baptized in King’s thought. You got the statue of him looking at you. And so King was so important for me at a young age. But then when I got to Morehouse, Malcolm became my guy. And I have my goatee to this day. I will never cut it off as kind of testimony from my first conversion experience, reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. So here I am excited to be at King’s Alma Mater and my freshman year, this guy walks up to me and said, “You’re like a hand without a thumb. You don’t know who you are.” And he gave me Malcolm X’s autobiography. And I read it that night. And I found the language for my father’s anger. I found the language for how to imagine myself as a man, given the fact that I was so afraid because my father scared me to death. Malcolm became this hero of mine that I cut my political teeth on. And now here I am in my fifties. And Miss Baker is all up in me. It’s a more mature voice, I suppose, but we wouldn’t have a black freedom struggle of the 20th century if it wasn’t for her. And the way in which she has that wonderful line, “A strong people doesn’t need a strong leader.” And I said this once, I was speaking, I think it was in Chicago. I was like, “What happens when you have fans in the pews and a celebrity in the pulpit?” The church is dead. It’s done. I think we’re seeing a lot of that right now. What happens when you outsource your faith journey to someone else? And so part of what I’ve been trying to do is to live Miss Baker’s edict. Because the title of the book comes from her. We are the leaders we have been looking for. She says, “We have to convince people that their salvation is in their hands.” What we choose to do. Not what the preacher chooses to do, not what the politician chooses to do. So not what Malcolm inspired me to do, not what King leads me to do, but what’s coming from inside of my heart in light of the exemplars of excellence and love that inform and shape my own voice as I understand it. And that’s what I’m writing towards in the book.
Maina
You keep talking to me. So last question. Sure. Your spiritual faith journey, did that come into play in this book at all?
Dr. Glaude
It’s at work in all of my texts. To be honest with you, it’s me trying to understand what does it what does it mean to be decent and loving? What does it mean to exemplify the ministry of Jesus without it being overlaid with dogma and an institutional constraint. So when I call for a coalition of the decent, animated by the power of love, that is the exacting power of love. That is that is at the heart of my religious Christian witness, as it were. And there’s a moment in the book near the end where I’m going to invoke Jimmy Baldwin again. He has this extraordinary essay that is published after his after his death is entitled “To Crush A Serpent.” And in this in this essay, he is relentless in his critique of the Fallwells and the moral majority and the like. But he talks about what salvation involves, what it entails. And it’s an echo of an earlier essay, a talk that he gave at Kalamazoo in 1961, entitled “In Search For A Majority.” And he says salvation is found in effect in “the going towards.” Salvation is found in the going towards in some ways. And I want to suggest that salvation is found in the going towards and love is its carriage. So the short answer to the question is, is yes, me trying to figure all of this out, indebted to the Christian tradition, but not limited by it. Those lectures produced an uncommon faith. So the short answer is yes, all my books are or attempts to make sense of this complex journey that I’m making in terms of my faith.
This Interview contains conversation about depression and suicide. If you or someone you know is dealing with depression make sure you encourage them to seek professional help. If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988. The Lifeline provides 24-hour, confidential support to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress.
This interview is published in honor of World Mental Health Day. You can find April Simpkins co-authored book with her late daughter Cheslie Kryst, here.
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Maina
Ms. Simpkins, what a powerful book. And so I’m asking this question with all sincerity. I’ve been there before. How are you doing?
April
You know, I take a temperature check on myself. And my mental health on a regular basis. Right now, honestly, out of a 1 to 5 scale, I’m a 4, which is OK. And that’s a good place. Good place. You know, losing a child is just hard. It’s just one of those things I pray that nobody goes through.
Maina
You said that she had high functioning depression. Can you explain that term to me because I think some of people may not understand that term?
April
Sure, I think most people are familiar with the term major depressive disorder. And we see that it will take over. That is when you see someone really struggling. They’re fatigued. They’re not eating. It shows in their facial expression. There are so many outwards visual appearances to having major depressive disorder. But what Cheslie had was persistent depressive disorder, which is a little different. And persistent depressive disorder shows several of the symptoms of major depressive disorder. But they’re not as critical and they don’t go away. I think for many of us who have gone through a trauma or a change that took you over, that maybe weren’t expecting, you will feel the emotion of depression. It’s the natural emotion. We all feel that.
Maina
We all go through it, yes.
April
Exactly. But that’s the key word is that we go through it. With Cheslie, she lived with it. And was still able to function. And that’s one of the challenges with persistent depressive disorder is you will think to yourself, it’s not that bad. I can still do these things or I’m still able to do these things. And that is where it gets its hybrid name, high functioning depression. I had not heard that term before. And so, I was like, that is really deep. And it made me lean into friends and family members who are in that category. Because we usually see the other side [of depression] and not this side.
Maina
Cheslie’s Foundation. How did that come into play? How’s that going?
April
Cheslie was one of the most giving people ever. Even now, I still hear stories of things she did for others. And it teaches me so much. As a matter of fact, I was just in New York on Friday and talked with a young woman who said that Cheslie had read over one of her essays she had to write for college and gave her a few tips. There are people who I know Cheslie has given them some encouragement on becoming an attorney and words of support and taking the bar exam. When she was in law school and, of course, getting her MBA simultaneously and just involved in a plethora of other organizations, she still found the time to mentor at-risk teens. And would go, I remember vividly, when she skipped a family event, which for us is sacred. But skipped a family event because she wanted to go to the graduation of one of the young women that she mentored. Cheslie gave. And she did it without boasting. She didn’t do it to win awards or anything. She did it because that was the essence of who she was. And this, for me, in my mind, is always going to be Cheslie’s book. And what do I do with what comes of her final work? And that is to allow her legacy to live on and doing that through the spirit of giving. And so, all the net proceeds from the book will go into the foundation. And then we will, in turn, send that money back out to other nonprofits that are focused on the mental health and wellness of youth and teens, our young adults and teens.
Lisa Fields speaks to people all over the country about how faith has disappointed them and inspired them as the Founder of the Jude 3 Project. As an apologist she wants to make sure believers are equipped to defend and articulate their faith in Jesus Christ in the midst of the skepticism and difficulties of the world. In her new book When Faith Disappoints, she shares her own struggles with faith and how she has been strengthened in the midst of them as she hopes to strengthen others.