By Tabitha Evans Moore, EDITOR & PUBLISHER

LYNCHBURG – Eccho Staples says the night she heard her name called as the 2003 Miss Lynchburg felt surreal. As she stood there holding hands with the other contestants in her periwinkle blue gown, current Metro Fire Chief and former Miss Lynchburg emcee Mark Neal announced the winner.

“I heard my name but it didn’t click with me until the other girls on the stage started congratulating me,” she says. “Then I saw the judges beaming at me, my momma crying, and my daddy clapping. That’s when I realized it was real.”

Not only did the self-proclaimed tomboy win the crown, but as the great-great-great granddaughter of another Black historical Lynchburg figure, Nearest Green, Eccho made history that night as the first Black Miss Lynchburg. To celebrate Black History Month, The Times caught up with her to talk about that night, the legacy of her now famous forefather, and growing up as a Black girl in a predominately white small southern town.

Tomboy to beauty queen

Eccho grew up in Moore County as part of the Eady family, who are direct descendants of Nearest Green – the Black former slave now credited with teaching a young Jasper Newton Daniel how to make whiskey. Her mother, Debbie Eady Staples, and Nearest Green Distillery Master Blender, Victoria Eady Butler, are sisters. Her grandmother, Beverly Eady, and the former residing queen bee of Elm Street, Sis Eady, were both the beloved daughters of Annie Bell Eady, the granddaughter of Nearest Green.

Eccho attended Moore County schools from kindergarten until her senior year. She played both varsity girls basketball and softball. In fact, her Raiderettes squad made it all the way to the Murphy Center in 2003. The Gayle Sessions coached team placed third that year after a 45-39 loss to Ezell-Harding in the Class 1A Semifinal game.

“I was a bit of a tomboy,” Eccho says. “I really didn’t care about make-up or dresses. I really didn’t care about winning. I just wanted to play dress up with my friends and make some senior memories.”

For someone who avoided the spotlight unless it was with a team on an athletic court or field, Eccho says a beauty pageant felt outside her comfort zone. She says she also struggled to find a dress that fit her personality. Some dresses looked too poofy and others showed too much cleavage for her taste.

“I’m not girly and I wanted to try something different,” Eccho says.

She says the salesperson kept bringing dresses that weren’t quite right, until suddenly she appeared with one more dress from the back. It was a modest periwinkle dress with a simple bodice and a straight skirt. It looked iridescent and appeared blue in some lights and purple in others.

“As soon as I tried it on, I knew it was the one,” Eccho says.

Prior to the night of Miss Lynchburg, she even got some unexpected help perfecting her pageant walk.

“My daddy taught me my pageant walk. I still remember how he looked as we practiced. He was very poised and held his shoulders back,” Eccho says as she reminisces with tears in the corner of her eyes. Eccho was and is a Daddy’s Girl and her father, Glenn “BI” Staples, died in January 2020.

The Nearest Green legacy

Over a decade after Eccho’s history-making pageant win, New York Times reporter Clay Risen wrote his June 2016 piece entitled Jack Daniel’s Embraces a Hidden Ingredient: Help From a Slave. Though many have embraced that article as a piece of investigative journalism, Risen built the article around information that The Jack Daniel Distillery provided as part of their 150 year anniversary.

It marked an important milestone, shifted the conversation, and ultimately led to the founding of The Nearest Green Distillery now located in Bedford County that celebrates Green’s legacy with his own charcoal-mellowed product.

Eccho says she knew about her great-great-great-grandfather’s whiskey-making legacy here in Lynchburg. It’s never been a secret. But she didn’t connect his legacy as the freed slave who taught Jack Daniel’s to make whiskey to hers as the first Black Miss Lynchburg until years later.

“Thinking back, I am a trailblazer,” she says during our interview as her spine stiffens and a broad smile crosses her face. “When I tell people I won Miss Lynchburg my senior year now, I always let them know that I made history. I sure did.”

Even today, Eccho says the Green legacy is not often a topic of discussion. She says she’ll seek out and read articles about her great-great-great grandfather because the history is interesting to her, but she tends to hold her tongue – even in the presence of people from outside Moore County who have strong opinions on the subject. It’s not something she discusses on social media or with people she doesn’t know.

In the end, Eccho says she agreed to be interviewed and tell her story to encourage other brown-skinned girls to go for things – even in rural small towns. She’s now the single mom to a 11-year-old little girl named Emilianna, and she wants her to know she can do anything she sets her mind to and more.

“My parents raised me to be aware that racism existed in the world, but in Lynchburg no one ever treated me as if being a Black girl was any different,” she says. “That tells you a lot about this little sweet town.” •

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