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Macon Dead I, also known as Jake, is Solomon’s son and Milkman’s grandfather. As a child, Macon was left by his father Solomon, who flew back to Africa to escape slavery. Solomon attempted to carry the young Jake with him on his flight, but he dropped him when the weight became too much. His flight causes his wife, Jake’s mother, to go insane, which deeply damages their family unit and foreshadows the novel’s themes of cyclical abandonment and its consequences. Jake lives through the end of slavery and the emancipation of Black Americans, and builds a new life as a free man, which includes being given the name Macon Dead. He starts a family of his own, and together they care for a small farm in Pennsylvania, which Pilate recalls as an idyllic paradise. However, the fact that Macon owns property angers a nearby white family, the Butlers, who murder Macon for his insurgence against what they perceive to be the established and rightful racial hierarchy. His death is a traumatic incident that sets in motion the juxtaposing paths of his children. While Macon Jr. turns to material wealth and status as a protection against violent racism, Pilate believes in the power of love to create a supportive Black community built on trust and reciprocity.
Macon Dead’s last name is a foretelling of his unjust future—a murder at the hands of racist white men—but it is also a prophecy for the entirety of his family line. His son, Macon Dead II, lives up to this last name not literally but figuratively: his infatuation with wealth, his internalized racism, and his abusive treatment of women kills his soul, separates him from his ancestry and community, and stagnates the lives of his wife and daughters. Milkman carries on in his footsteps, continuing this tragic curse until he finally finds freedom and flight. Ironically, Milkman’s literal death at the end of the novel can be seen as a liberation from the figurative death that had previously consumed his life.
