[john david washington, cismale, he/him] who’s that? oh it’s [john “jack” baldwin taylor]. i hear they’re [38] and are known as [the Blue Collar] around [Compton, California] and [Uncle Jack] at [the trailer park]. they’re known to be [principled + hardworking] and [obstinate + explosive]. some people say they remind them of [big dreams abandoned for duty, becoming a man at ten years old, marching for your right to live at fifteen, constantly looking over his shoulder].
STATISTICS
FULL NAME: john “jack” baldwin taylor GENDER/PRONOUNS: cis male; he/him AGE: thirty-eight FACECLAIM: john david washington BIRTHDAY: november 29 STAR SIGN: sagittarius HOMETOWN: jackson, mississippi HEIGHT: 5′10″ OCCUPATION: construction worker ORIENTATION: homosexual
HEADCANONS
tw: domestic abuse, tw: racism, tw: police brutality, tw: death
*Jack Taylor is the oldest of five and was born November 29, 1950 in Jackson, Mississippi. His father was a sharecropper with a drinking problem, and his mother was a deeply Christian house cleaner. By the time his youngest sister was born, Jack’s father had graduated from just drinking to drinking and hitting him and his mother. When it finally reached its peak, ten-year-old Jack helped his mother pack up the kids and move across the country, where they eventually settled in Compton, California under the roof of their guardian angel, Auntie Brown. Jack definitely has oldest sibling syndrome, and acted as a parental figure to the younger kids even as a child himself. His relationship with Susan is largely shaped by this dynamic even still– in sixth grade, he would save her from her bullies at lunch, when Max was little Jack would watch her on weekends Susan couldn’t get off work, and now as adults he sends Susan whatever money he can spare each month.
*Obviously, Jack grew up heavily influenced by the Civil Rights movement. He went to his first integrated school in sixth grade, huddled around his auntie’s old radio at thirteen to hear “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere” for the first time, rallied with his friends at the Watts protest at fifteen. Tragically, his best friend was killed by police on the way back from the riot, and Jack was arrested for the first time. Jack and his friends were bailed out of jail by a local activist who would go on to help found the LA Chapter of the Black Panther Party, which Jack joined at eighteen (1968). Jack was present when the FBI raided the LA Chapter, just four days after Fred Hampton was murdered in Chicago. Thankfully, they learned from Chicago, and were prepared. No panthers died, but Jack was arrested a second time upon their strategic surrender.
*Jack is a poet! He always liked English in school, and was a regular face at the neighborhood library. When he was new to Compton, he wrote a lot about the neighborhood– the dreams it held, the feeling of community and mutual understanding. As he got older, and especially after Malcolm X’s assassination and the Watts riots, Jack’s poetry took on an angrier, more restless tone– questioning the viability of the revolution, wanting change to happen now. After Martin was killed, Jack’s poetry became all the more hopeless, wondering about the point of any of this. But, he was good and his senior English teacher secretly sent his poetry to UCLA, which in turn offered Jack a hefty scholarship. He wanted to take it, could already see how different his life would be, but his mom was cleaning 3 houses a day and still couldn’t make the mortgage. So, Jack declined the scholarship and began working construction full-time after graduation. He didn’t mind the job, it was flexible enough for him to be heavily involved with the Panthers, and he liked the physicality of it, the escape from his mind– but when he was twenty-nine, a freak accident put him out of work for two weeks with what he assumed was a bad back sprain. In those two weeks, they almost lost the house. So Jack, desperate to provide, filled a shady painkiller prescription from a friend and went back to work. As you can imagine, this quickly became a pill-dependency situation and Jack got addicted quick. But it was fine, he had it under control– it mellowed him out, which was never a bad thing for him.
* When Susan came home and said she was pregnant with Sam’s child– Sam, who was multiple years older than Susan– Jack almost killed him. He knew immediately that Sam wouldn’t stick around or be able to provide for his family, and he told Susan as much. So maybe he began protecting Max even before she was born, as an extension of her mother. But Jack was there at her birth, drove them home from the hospital, helped set up the crib in their cramped apartment in San Diego. And throughout Max’s childhood, Jack was present as often as he could be– staying with them in between projects, keeping Max what felt like every other weekend. He loved her like his own, truly, and did right by the Panthers by raising her on good music, teacher her their shared history. When Sam left, Jack was a little relieved, and he easily took on the role of father figure, showing up to every Parents Day at Max’s school and signing her out early to go surfing and maybe scaring the shit out of her male classmates so they wouldn’t come near her. Only once or twice. Jack’s injury and subsequent addiction led to him being less present than usual, less clearheaded. He didn’t want Max to see him that way, so he limited his visits to once a month, once every other month, though he diligently sent letters and books and tapes when he could.
* The culmination of Jack’s addiction was May 21, 1979. He had a few days off of work, and the news had quickly spread that the ex-cop who murdered Harvey Milk– prominent gay rights activist and politician– had been sentenced not with first-degree murder, but with voluntary manslaughter. Jack and a few other ex-Black Panthers (by this time, the party had officially dissolved into smaller, community-led organizations) drove to San Francisco to represent for the protesting. The riot wasn’t violent, not like others Jack had experienced, but police officers showed up in full force to dispel the crowd with tear gas and nightsticks. And Jack, high off of his pain medication, picked a fight with an off-duty cop who was helping to quell the protesting. The cop had been spouting racist and homophobic slurs, and Jack jumped him, much to the horror of his friends. He was quickly arrested and sentenced five years in county prison. It was there that Jack got clean– because really, he had no other option. While he was in prison, Susan married Neil Hargrove and moved Max to Hawkins, which Jack didn’t hear about until months later when his brother bothered to tell him. Thanks to good connections and community activism, Jack’s Panther brothers and sisters scored him a good lawyer, who got him out after only a year, parole for the last four of his sentence.
* The several years after his prison stint saw Jack settling down– his version of settling down, that is. Jack played with the idea of getting a “real” job, but realized that was a pipe dream pretty quick– with no college degree and a rap sheet, he was shit out of luck. So, he resumed working construction jobs and moved back into his old house to take care of his mom, who had gotten really sick while he was locked up. Lung cancer, like Auntie Brown. She held on for a year, and it was harder than prison for Jack to watch his mother suffer like that, to not be able to do anything about it but pick up every job he could to try and afford whatever would ease her pain. Mae Jackson died on August 2, 1981. She was survived by her five kids: Jack, Susan, Phyllis, Moses, and Ruth. Jack arranged the funeral, paid travel expenses for his siblings, made sure everything was perfect– almost as if he was making up for the ways he’d failed his mom. The arrests, the sneaking around behind her back, the never telling her who he really was. Jack kept the house, and after a few of his friends moved in, it turned into a meeting place for community activity. Jack and a few other ex-Panthers had kept the community enrichment activity alive in the wake of the party’s dissolution, and had coordinated food distributions, a bail program, free legal advice, an after school program (Jack’s personal baby), AA and NA meetings, and much more. It was a beat-down some days, to continue this work in the midst of gang violence and rampant poverty and after the blatant murder of so many of their leaders, but it was necessary. It was bigger than them, bigger than Compton.
* Then, in June of 1988, Jack got a phone call that would change his life forever. It was Susan, calling to ask for money– which was nothing out of the ordinary, he’d been sending what little he could spare every month– but this time, she was noticeably drunk, and she let slip that Max had been arrested. Something about posting bail and not being able to pay the bills. So Jack wrangled Phyllis into taking over his room (and his payments) at the house, finished up his most recent job, and hit the road. Destination: Buttfuck, Indiana.
PINTEREST | BIOGRAPHY | CONNECTIONS | PLAYLIST
*BIOGRAPHY AND CONNECTIONS TO BE ADDED
*Link to unfinished biography (tw VERY long): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FL_bkCDNpG07BxlUC-XUMdOFHS9_krkKBCd9nlgNpZQ/edit?usp=sharing
