Born John Joseph Killion in Greenpoint, New York, he took the professional name of "Jake Kilrain" to protect his parents from the embarrassment of his questionable career as a prize fighter. He lost the heavy-weight championship to John L. Sullivan in a bare-knuckle fight that went 75 rounds in Richbourg, Mississippi, on August 7, 1889.
John L. Sullivan was the last heavyweight American prizefighter to win his championship without wearing gloves ('bare knuckle'). He won by defeating Jake Kilrain at Richburg, Mississippi on August 7, 1889. He was the son of Irish immigrants who became rich, which probably explains why General Compson uses him in Absalom! as a point of comparison with Thomas Sutpen, the 'immigrant' to Yoknapatawpha (34-35).
Job Wylie was probably born a slave, owned by the man he still calls "Marse Hoke Christian" (233). He has worked in the Christian family drugstore ever since it opened "in eighteen-fifty-something," and in the present also works as Willy Christian's cook and housekeeper (226). Job is very loyal to the Christian family, though according to the narrator of "Uncle Willy" he also embodies Jefferson's "timid clinging to dull and rule-ridden-breathing" (239).
Willy Christian's sister in "Uncle Willy" was, like him, born in Jefferson, but she "married an oil millionaire" and now lives in Texas (225). She feels enough concern for her brother's morphine addiction to return to Jefferson on one occasion, and for her family's local reputation to pay the woman Willy marries to leave town on a subsequent occasion.
These are the people - referred to simply as "they" - in the seven different places where Secretary lands the plane as he tries to fly from Memphis to Renfro (243). At each of these places, "they tell him how to get to Renfro" (243); the implication is that it is Secretary's fault that he cannot follow their directions.
These are the adult men in "Hair" who attend "Mr. Miller's men's Bible class" at Reverend Schultz's church; they do not seem to play any role in the church's campaign to reform Willy (228).
When the title character of "Uncle Willy" is told he cannot fly until he provides "a permit from a doctor" certifying he is healthy enough, he complains about "these Republicans and Democrats and XYZ's" who are to blame for all such government regulations (241).
In "Uncle Willy" these "folks in wagons and walking" on the road in Renfro stop to watch when they reach the pasture where Secretary is trying to teach Willy how to fly the plane (244). Since Secretary is black and Willy is white, the spectators' own race presumably affects the way they see this unusual sight, but the story says nothing to indicate what that is.
These "field hands" at Renfro in "Uncle Willy" "come up out of the fields" to stare up at the spectacle of Secretary trying to teach Willy how to fly the plane (244). Their perspective as they watch a black man teach a white man this skill would presumably depend on their own race, but the story says nothing to indicate what that is.
