• Jacob Blake is the father of six sons and descends from a long line of professionals and activists.
• We know his name because a police officer shot him in the back.
• He's a complicated but unremarkable man, and his story is messy.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Every day, Jacob Blake Jr. experiences full-body spasms so agonizing that he clenches his teeth, grabs his legs, and locks in place.

The 30-year-old is self-conscious about the involuntary spurts that attack his slender frame, and he apologizes when they happen. His sister Letetra Wideman likened them to labor contractions and said they can last five minutes or more.

These spasms are the result of Blake Jr.'s inability to move his leg muscles after a Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer fired seven shots into his back that caused him to be paralyzed from the waist down.

Family members try not to be alarmed and behave as normal as possible when the spasms occur, but witnessing them is uncomfortable.

His father, Jacob Blake Sr., remembered how difficult Christmas night was for his son and grandsons, who heard their father's excruciating pain.

"He would have the spasms. He would holler out, scream, and cry. And I was just sitting there with him, and just hold his hands and rub his arms. You know, just trying to give comfort to your child," Blake Sr. said, adding that they'd cry together. "It was rough."

We know Jacob Blake Jr.'s name because a video of a police officer shooting him on August 23 went viral, as Americans demonstrated almost daily against racial injustice and police brutality.

The public has only seen Blake Jr. a handful of times since that day. In September, he spoke out for the first time about the effects of the shooting.

-Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) September 6, 2020

"Twenty-four hours - every 24 hours - it's pain. It's nothing but pain. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to sleep. It hurts to move from side to side. It hurts to eat," he said from his hospital bed in a video his attorney shared.

Two of the bullets the officer fired blew out two of his vertebrae, severing Blake Jr.'s spinal cord and damaging his colon, small intestine, kidney, and liver. He now has neuropathy, a condition where damaged nerves cause sharp pain.

Every 24 hours, it's pain. It's nothing but pain. It hurts to breathe. Jacob Blake Jr.

He spent several weeks both in a Chicago area rehabilitation facility and a Milwaukee hospital following the shooting. His mother, Julia Jackson, took a personal leave from work to be his primary caregiver, even bathing him because he can't do so himself now.

"Unfortunately, I need help all day. My mom, she's helping me get in and out of the bed. She helps me do a lot of stuff. It's changed 100%," Blake Jr. told Michael Strahan in January. (Blake Jr. declined to speak with other media outlets, including Insider, following the ABC News interview.)

Jacob Blake Jr. is a complicated, largely unremarkable man.

But he's more than just a name to chant. He's a father to six sons and a descendant of a storied line of activists, preachers, and educated professionals.

His sprawling family has dealt with his shooting in different ways, trying to support him, push for justice, and live up to the legacy of their forebears.

People don't know much about Blake Jr. outside of the shooting. Parts of his story are very messy.

---

The early years

Blake Jr.'s parents didn't have a fabled courtship that would inspire use of the popular "Black Love" hashtag. Instead, Jackson and Blake Sr. - who both grew up in Evanston, Illinois, and knew each other from the neighborhood - had a brief romantic relationship that resulted in her becoming pregnant with "Little Jake."

By the time Blake Jr. was born, Blake Sr. had married another woman who was also expecting his child. Blake Jr. lived in Evanston with his mother and two half sisters, Wideman, now 32, and Megan Jackson Belcher, now 26.

"Big Jake" lived 700 miles away, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, but he was relatively active in his son's life. "Maybe not enough, but quite a bit," Blake Sr. said.

Providing financial support for his son wasn't an issue. Blake Sr. operated Jake's Journeyman Floor Care, a commercial flooring business with clients nationwide.

"I was one of the best commercial floor strippers in the nation," Blake Sr. said.

When Blake Jr. reached the fourth grade, he went to live with his father because he was doing poorly in school. His parents thought his father's influence and a disciplined environment would help. Blake Jr.'s stepmother, Angela, who worked as a registered nurse at the time, helped him improve his level of comprehension.

Living with his father was far different from living with his mother. Blake Sr. ran a tight ship and expected his children to follow his rules. A list of household chores posted on the refrigerator had to be completed.

"Which gives you structure, which gives you a strong self-understanding. What you can do and what you have to do. Not what you want to do. What you have to do," Blake Sr. said.

The rules became too much for Blake Jr. and he'd often call Evanston, protesting to his mother.

"I remember him calling all of the time, talking about he wants to come home. Crying on the phone and stuff like that," Wideman said. "I knew it wasn't going to be long before my mom let him come back home."

And it wasn't. Jackson, who by some accounts spoiled her only son, gave in to his wishes, and Blake Jr. was on his way back to Evanston after spending less than two years in North Carolina. (Jackson didn't respond to Insider's interview requests.)

Blake Sr. said he saw his son every time he visited Chicago, which was about three times a year.

When Blake Jr. became interested in football, his father paid for him to participate in the High Ridge Chargers, a local youth football program. He followed in the footsteps of his father and uncle Justin Blake, and played football at Evanston Township High School. But his football career was short-lived. He didn't play beyond his freshman year.

"He was a pretty good athlete for a while," Blake Sr. said, pausing for a moment before continuing. "The streets were more fascinating to my son."

He admitted that his son "couldn't quite get the high school thing together" and faced "a lot of peer pressure" from his friends to hang out and be cool.

He was a pretty good athlete for a while ... The streets were more fascinating to my son. Jacob Blake Sr.

Jae Rice attended Evanston Township with Blake Jr. and remembered him as a jokester who could easily make people laugh.

"Yeah, I would definitely put him in the category of, you know, the guys who just want to have fun and hang out versus, like, an athlete," Rice, 30, said.

Rice was an aspiring rapper and bonded with Blake Jr. over music.

"You know, he was one of the first people I went to when I had a new song out. I knew he was gonna tell me the truth. If it sucked, I knew I was gonna hear that," said Rice, who is now a DJ and director of communications at Brave Space Alliance.

Wideman remembered the mischief her brother got into when he was younger.

"He definitely started getting into the wrong stuff, hanging out with the wrong crowds. And started failing some classes in school. And at this point, it's, like, maybe you did need to stay at your dad's house," Wideman said.

"A lot of stuff will slip through the cracks when you're a single parent and you're at work all of the time and your kids have to be at home, or whatever they're doing."

Wideman is three years older than Blake Jr., and she stepped in to help prepare meals and keep an eye on him and their younger sister. If he broke curfew she wouldn't tell on him, and if he was in trouble she'd try to help him out.

"And I know that my brother - always since he was little - that he was someone I wanted to protect and always did," Wideman said.

There were times when Wideman wasn't around to have her little brother's back.

Wideman said that when Blake Jr. was 13 or 14, he missed curfew and was trying to sneak into the house when a neighbor saw him and called the police. Wideman said the Evanston police arrived and beat Blake Jr. so badly that he suffered a broken nose and had to be hospitalized.

"When I came outside and saw my brother on the ground I thought he was dead. I thought he was dead," Wideman said in a video on Facebook.

She said her brother was taken to Evanston Hospital, but their mother decided not to pursue legal action against the police department or the officers involved.

"They didn't tell me about it until much later. I wasn't living in Evanston at the time," Blake Sr. said. "The Evanston Police Department should've been prosecuted."

When asked about Wideman's claims, a representative for the Evanston Police Department said it doesn't disclose information regarding juveniles. A representative for Evanston Hospital said state and federal privacy laws prohibited them from commenting on a person's protected health information.

Back in July 1989, Justin accused the Chicago Police Department of police brutality. The department didn't admit fault and he reached a $5,000 settlement agreement related to the incident.

Blake Sr. said Jr's traumatic incident, compounded with his brother's experience, affected how his son saw the police.

"That made him skeptical of the police. He didn't trust them. He got beat by them, and he did not trust them," Blake Sr. said.

A few years later, Little Jake became a father.

Blake Jr., who was 16 at the time, and a girl he was dating had a son, whom they named Jacob.

Wideman said Blake Jr. has a good relationship with his oldest son, but that she and their mother raised the child when he spent time at their house. Blake Jr., like most boys that age, preferred to hang out with his friends than perform daily parental duties.

"Up until recently, Jacob would easily say, 'No, you discipline him before I do, because you raised him,'" Wideman said.

When Blake Jr. was 23, he and his longtime girlfriend, Laquisha Booker, welcomed their eldest son together, Israel, who is now 8. In the following years, they had three more sons - Pharrell, 6, Lazarus, 3, and Bagera, 2. Booker also had a son, Taevyon, 11, from a previous relationship, though Blake Jr. is the first father figure he knew.

As much as Booker and Blake Jr. may have loved each other, their relationship was rife with issues, and they were on-again, off-again over the years.

In 2015, Blake Jr., who didn't graduate from high school, moved to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he juggled two jobs - one at a warehouse and the other as an armed security guard at a bar in Illinois - to "stack some money, work, and stay out of the way, and stay out of the trouble that was in Chicago," his uncle said.

"So here he is, coming out of Chicago, thinking he's reached the ideal place where he can raise his kids. It's a little more quiet, not the gangbanging and all the stuff that's going on in the streets of Chicago, and look what happened," Justin said.

---

A family of activists, preachers, and professionals

One could make a lot of assumptions about Blake Jr. based on what's been publicly revealed about him since police shot him.

Perhaps the most intriguing thing about him is his family's history. His father's side of the family is what many would consider to be Black Excellence personified, having achieved educational and professional successes the most people weren't reaching during those time periods.

Patricia Goudeau Blake, Blake Jr.'s paternal grandmother, is a retired social worker, and at 78, she can rattle off the accomplishments of her parents, grandparents, and late husband, the Rev. Jacob S. Blake.

Lola Williamson, Blake Jr.'s great-great-grandmother, graduated from Fisk University, a historically Black university in Nashville, and worked as a teacher in Indian Territory in Oklahoma before it became a state.

"At one point in time, her family owned the biggest farm in Kentucky owned by Black people," Blake Sr. said.

Blake Jr.'s great-grandmother also went to college, attending the University of Chicago before leaving to work at a plant during World War II. L'Ouveture Goudeau, his great-grandfather, was a retired Air Force pilot who instructed the Tuskegee Airmen.

Goudeau Blake grew up with a rich, Black Chicago history. The Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens and his family lived a block from her.

Her family was among the first Black Americans to integrate the city's Park Manor neighborhood after they purchased their house in 1949. Goudeau Blake was 6 years old then, and she still lives in that property today. She recalled when Al Capone's family also lived in the South Side neighborhood and his mother attended the same Catholic parish as her family.

"There were very few Blacks in Park Manor at that time," Goudeau Blake said.

The Rev. Blake was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1916 into a family full of ministers, and eventually became a third-generation African Methodist Episcopal preacher. He attended North Carolina State University and Indiana University, but didn't graduate from either institution.

Before he became a preacher, he fought in strikes on behalf of workers as a grievance committeeman at Gary Works and US Steel for over two decades. He even launched an unsuccessful bid for the Indiana House of Representatives. The Rev. Blake was friends with A. Philip Randolph - the labor unionist and civil rights activist who was the head of the historic March on Washington - because their fathers were both AME ministers who knew each other.

Goudeau Blake was the Rev. Blake's fourth wife and 27 years his junior. She was 20 and had just graduated from DePaul University. Goudeau Blake said she enjoyed her life with her husband. They traveled often, spending a month in South Africa in 1974, and built their family. Blake Sr. has fond memories of their family trips and fishing with his father, a tradition he's kept up with Blake Jr. and his 12 other children, which also includes Wideman and others who aren't biologically his.

Blake Sr. said he was truly a mischievous preacher's kid. To keep him out of her hair, his mother would send him with the Rev. Blake when he would visit his friends, including Illinois state legislator Cecil Partee. On one occasion, while playing in "Uncle Cecil's" office, Blake Sr. said he met former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and on another, he met then-Sen. Joe Biden.

The Rev. Blake led congregations in Chicago and Gary before becoming the pastor of Ebenezer AME Church in Evanston in 1967.

He was a local pillar of the civil rights movement for his community, protesting against racial housing-discrimination practices and urging Evanston officials to pass a stronger fair-housing ordinance.

Evanston's Black residents didn't have the option to live all over the city and were pretty much relegated to its west side, Goudeau Blake recalled.

"When he was leading these marches, you know, he had, like, 3,000 people, and he would stir the crowd with his words," said Jenny Thompson, a historian at the Evanston History Center.

She said the Rev. Blake threatened to organize a boycott as a way to put pressure on the city council to pass legislation that made it illegal to discriminate in housing. His persistence led to the construction of Ebenezer-Primm Towers, a 107-unit low-income housing complex for seniors, which opened in Evanston in 1974.

The Rev. Blake worked with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., attended the 1963 March on Washington, and marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.

He would stir the crowd with his words. Jenny Thompson, Evanston History Center historian

But in 1976, Rev. Blake died from leukemia, dealing a devastating blow to their family.

Goudeau Blake was left to raise her three children, ages 10, 9, and 7, as a single parent.

Despite Goudeau Blake's efforts, a grief-stricken Blake Sr. grew to resent the church.

"He fell out of love with the AME church because we had to move out of the parsonage like Speedy Gonzales, and that amplified his distrust of the church, his bitter feelings about the loss of his father," Goudeau Blake said.

A rebellious Blake Sr., disillusioned and searching for male guidance, found solace in a street gang.

"I do understand the psychological impact of how that offered a father figure," Goudeau Blake said. "As Jacob once said to me, 'You can't be a mother and a father, mom. You just can't.' And I couldn't, but I tried."

Goudeau Blake said she had no idea what was going on with her son. But as his reputation around Evanston grew, influenced by his charisma and magnetic personality, she learned.

She enlisted the help of some older teens and worked to get Blake Sr. back on track. She also enrolled him in various private high schools before he got to Evanston Township.

Nicole Blake Chafetz, Goudeau Blake's daughter and eldest child, earned a juris doctorate from DePaul University. Though both Blake Sr. and Justin attended college on football scholarships, neither completed undergrad, despite their mother's encouragement.

"Jacob and Justin both are just hours from their degrees and then got into working. Jacob had his own business for 19 years," Goudeau Blake said.

Blake had also worked as an armed security guard for several celebrities. By 2008, the recession and personal health issues forced Blake Sr. to shutter his successful flooring company. At age 47 he had a heart attack, and open-heart surgery slowed him down.

Although the circumstances differed, Blake Sr.'s yearning for a father figure is similar to what his son experienced decades later.

Blake Jr. wanted to follow in his father's footsteps.

"That's for sure," Wideman said. "His dad was always cool, you know, and everybody knew him. He was popular. Still is."

When Blake Sr. tried to warn Blake Jr. that street life wasn't a path to venture down, the younger Blake would rebuff and bring up the reputation and street credibility that his father had earned in his youth.

"Well, I think he wanted to be like his dad. But I don't think he understood how hard that was," Blake Sr. said. "You know, you want your child to be better than you. I didn't raise my kids out in the streets because I wanted him to be better than me."

---

7 shots in the back

August 23, 2020, was supposed to be a celebratory occasion.

It was Israel's 8th birthday, and Blake Jr. and Booker had planned a party and cookout to mark the occasion. Blake Jr. decorated the inside of the apartment in Kenosha and cooked hot dogs on the grill.

He spent the morning running errands with Israel in preparation for the party. Just before 1 p.m., Blake Jr. stopped by the Gulf gas station down the street from their home, the owner Mohammad Kanan said.

Kanan said Blake Jr. was a regular customer who stopped by several times a week to purchase gas or milk or candy for his sons. Kanan called him "J" or "the Bulls guy" because he always wore jackets and other clothing with the Chicago Bulls logo.

"He's most definitely a family man. Always been. That's all he cares about, his kids," Kanan said.

Blake Jr. stopped by his neighbor Donnell Lauderdale's home to invite Lauderdale's son to Israel's party. Lauderdale said he's known Blake Jr. for a few years, and that he was always friendly.

"When he came to my house, he had his son's birthday presents in his hand," Lauderdale said. "He asked me for a cigarette. I said, 'Oh, man, I'm finna go get some. I'll be right back. Let me run to the store, and when I bring him, I'll bring you some squares over there.'"

Lauderdale and his son went to the store, but when they returned an hour or so later, they found a commotion.

"I couldn't even pull up in front of the house. Fire trucks, cars, and ambulances were everywhere," Lauderdale said.

Lauderdale wasn't sure what had happened. He saw blood on the ground, which he and his wife cleaned the next morning.

Neighbors said Blake Jr. was breaking up a fight between two women. A report from the Wisconsin Department of Justice's Division of Criminal Investigation said one of the women was Booker and the other was a neighbor.

Blake Jr. later told DCI special agents that the women were fighting because Booker was sleeping with the neighbor's husband.

It was at this point that Blake Jr. put his sons into the gray Dodge Journey SUV that Booker had rented and attempted to leave. He later told investigators that he wanted to get his sons out of there because of the argument.

When Kenosha police officers arrived minutes later, witnesses said they immediately approached Blake Jr.

"It was 20 people outside telling the police you got the wrong person. He don't got nothing to do with it," said Damien Allen, who lives across the street.

Witnesses assumed the police were there because of the fight that Blake Jr. had broken up, but Booker had called the police on Blake Jr.

Booker told the 911 dispatcher that Blake Jr. had taken the keys to her rental vehicle and refused to give them back. She explained that she was concerned because Blake Jr. had previously taken her vehicles and crashed them. She also said he wasn't supposed to be there, but that she had "allowed him to spend a couple hours with" Israel for his birthday.

On May 3, 2020, Booker told the police that Blake Jr. had digitally penetrated her without her consent and stole her car and debit card. On July 6, he was charged with sexual assault, domestic abuse, trespassing, and disorderly conduct, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. This is the warrant that the police had when they approached Blake Jr. on the day of the shooting.

The sexual assault charge was dismissed on November 6 and Blake Jr. pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and received two years probation. Booker didn't respond to Insider's requests for comment and investigators couldn't locate her after a brief interview directly after the shooting.

The May 3 incident wasn't the first time Booker had alleged assault. In 2012, she told police in Zion, Illinois, that Blake Jr. had "domestically assaulted her," the DCI report said. When officers arrived that time, the report said, Blake Jr. took Booker's keys and sped off in her vehicle before crashing it.

Blake Jr. told DCI special agents that he was using the rental SUV to drive from Kenosha to Illinois, where he worked at a club as a security guard.

The truth, Blake Jr. told investigators, was that he had planned to end his relationship with Booker, leave Kenosha, and relocate to North Carolina with his father.

"He was going to bring one of the babies or two of the babies with him," Blake Sr. said.

Officer Rusten Sheskey, who shot Blake Jr. on August 23, told investigators that he knew he'd have to arrest Blake Jr. on seeing him because of the outstanding warrant.

Blake Jr. said the officers never told him why they were there or why they were attempting to arrest him, which is why he ignored their orders.

Allen said Sheskey's behavior was "overly aggressive from the start."

"So the guy walked up to him, and Jacob was trying to get in his car," Allen said of Sheskey. "He pushed the door, and he grabbed him, and they got to wrestling."

Police tried to subdue Blake Jr. with a Taser twice, but he ripped out the probes and continued to walk toward the driver's-side door of the SUV, the DCI report said.

Video footage captured by witnesses' cellphones showed Blake Jr. staggering toward the driver's door and opening it. Sheskey then grabbed Blake Jr. from behind by his shirt and fired seven shots at his back. Two of Blake Jr.'s sons were in the back seat.

Sheskey told investigators that he shot Blake Jr. because he saw him moving toward him with a folding knife. Blake Jr. denied any intention of using the knife on Sheskey. He told investigators it had fallen out of his pocket while he wrestled with the police. He added that he'd picked up the knife because it held sentimental value and he'd intended to put it in the SUV.

The only video footage of the incident was recorded by witnesses using their phones. Kenosha police officers didn't wear body cameras, and the squad-car cameras and audio weren't recording. (The department announced in April that officers would start wearing body cameras.)

In the cellphone footage, you can see Booker jumping up and down and screaming as Blake Jr. was shot.

"You overused it. That's what you did. You shot him numerous times for no reason," Booker said in a local TV interview afterward. "It didn't take all that. Disregard that my kids was in the car at all. And you knew they was in there because I kept screaming that before y'all even made it to the other side of the driver's side to get him in the car. I've been yelling that the whole time, 'Let me get my kids!'"

Though investigators said Booker and Blake Jr. weren't in a relationship at the time of the shooting, she identified herself as his fiancée when the media interviewed her that day. Wideman said Blake Jr. had bought Booker an engagement ring a couple of years ago.

You wouldn't expect nothing to happen to a man like that. Donnell Lauderdale, neighbor

When news spread around Kenosha that Blake Jr. was the person seen in viral videos being shot several times in the back by police officers, people who encountered him regularly were shocked.

"He don't start nothing. He don't be into no bulls--- in the neighborhood. You wouldn't expect nothing to happen to a man like that," Lauderdale said.

Allen said Blake Jr. was "the peacemaker" and described him as a family man.

In response, civil unrest erupted throughout Kenosha. The Wisconsin city with a population of 100,000 experienced days of chaos as peaceful protests calling for justice for Blake Jr. devolved into deadly riots and looting by nightfall.

On January 5, Michael Graveley, the district attorney of Kenosha County, announced that he wouldn't file charges against Sheskey and the two officers who accompanied him to the scene because prosecutors said the shooting was in self-defense.

"With these facts established, I do not believe the State could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Officer Sheskey was not acting lawfully in self-defense or defense of others which is the legal standard the State would have to meet to obtain a criminal conviction in this case," Gravely said in his report.

Kenosha residents, business owners, and government officials anticipated a repeat of the destruction following the DA's announcement. But the next day, supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol, and the world's attention turned. In Kenosha, nothing happened.

---

'Fighting for all the Little Jakes'

On a cloudy, cool autumn afternoon in downtown Chicago, Big Jake emerged from a black SUV wearing a black mask bearing his son's name. It had been two months since Blake Jr. had been shot by Kenosha police, and Blake Sr. was set to speak about the importance of police reform at a Get Out the Vote rally.

The October event united the Blakes with the families of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others who had died or been severely injured at the hands of police.

As Blake Sr. walked toward the stage, a small crowd congregated around him, growing as more people recognized him. Some said hello. Others offered words of support in the wake of Blake Jr.'s shooting.

Before taking his seat, Blake Sr. went around and greeted the other families. They seemed comforted by his presence.

Breonna Taylor's mother, Tamika Palmer, told Insider that Blake Sr. checks on her and her family members all the time.

"He's been so great to us. We've all become family," Palmer said.

Unlike many families touched by such tragedies, the Blakes have had exposure to activism and interacting with notable figures going back to the Rev. Blake's civil rights activities. Most of the Blake family members hadn't done much in recent years in terms of activism, until tragedy surrounding Blake Jr. inspired them to pick up the mantle.

Three days after the shooting, Wideman spoke out during a press conference. Surrounded by her family members and visibly exasperated, she said she was "numb" after years of "watching police murdering people" who look like her.

"I'm not sad. I don't want your pity. I want change," Wideman told the crowd.

I don't want your pity. I want change. Letetra Wideman

For the Blake family, change means continuing the fight beyond getting justice for Little Jake. It means meeting with elected officials to get support for police reform locally and nationwide.

Blake Sr., Justin Blake, and Bianca Austin, Breonna Taylor's aunt, were invited to the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on January 20 in Washington, DC. They were among the 1,000 people who had tickets to the ceremony, and they were seated on the National Mall to watch the historic event.

The family traveled to the nation's capital in hopes of meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to discuss police reform. They were unable to meet with her, but spoke with other members of Congress about the issue.

"We weren't able to see people face to face. We were able to talk to quite a few Congress people and senators that were open to what we're talking about," said Justin Blake, who declined to name the lawmakers.

On March 25, Blake Jr.'s attorneys filed a federal civil rights suit against Sheskey, rebutting any suggestion that the shooting was justified. Sheskey's attorney didn't respond to Insider's request for comment.

As the Blake family navigates the activism world, the legacy of the Rev. Blake looms.

In March, the city of Evanston voted to create a $10 million reparations initiative to help redress the race-based housing inequities that African Americans encountered there.

"There's no question that Blake was one of many who laid that groundwork," Thompson, the Evanston historian, said of the reverend. "I think people would be surprised to know how far back the struggle to achieve fair-housing legislation, and fair housing, and everything goes."

Back in Kenosha, Justin and a dedicated group of mostly young, racially diverse people kept marching against racial injustice every day for months after Blake Jr. was shot.

"Like we said when we initially came down - that we weren't just fighting for Little Jake. We were fighting for all the Little Jakes around the nation," Justin said.

The group gathered on April 25 to protest Sheskey's return to duty. About 40 people who thought Sheskey had acted excessively and should have been fired attended a sit-in protest that the Blake family had organized.

Some attendees locked arms as they sat and blocked the entrance to the Kenosha County Public Safety Building. Justin and two other local activists were arrested and booked on charges of misdemeanor disorderly conduct. They were released the next day.

Officer Sheskey, who was on paid administrative leave since the shooting, returned to work on March 31, though he hasn't returned to patrol.

Blake Jr. is still adjusting to his new reality.

In February, three Jacob Blakes - Jr., Sr., and Sr.'s 20-year-old son who also inherited the name - were hospitalized at the same time. Blake Jr. had to receive antibiotics intravenously. His brother had contracted COVID-19. And Blake Sr., who moved to Chicago immediately after the shooting, was hospitalized for five and a half weeks - two of which were spent in the intensive-care unit.

Blake Sr. said his son is doing a lot better now, especially spiritually, than he was earlier this year, despite the persistent spasms. He said Blake Jr. is still processing his condition and everything that's happened to him since last August.

Blake Sr. attributed this improvement to the passage of time.

"Once you understand what you have to go through, and you have to go through it, nobody else can do it for you," Blake Sr. said.

Blake Jr. turned 30 on April 30. He didn't want to celebrate.

As the father of six Black boys, it isn't lost on Blake Jr. that his sons may have to encounter the police on their own one day. Witnessing their father's shooting and the aftermath has heavily influenced their view of law enforcement.

Blake Sr. said he and Jr. haven't had "the talk" with his grandsons about racism and how to engage with the police, but that they would soon. He added that his son had the same fears and thoughts that many Black fathers have for their children.

"The fears that systematically have been passed down generation after generation. This is not something that he read about in an article," Blake Sr. said. "He actually experienced it."