‘Jawn Morgan’ commits the ultimate Philly sin | Jenice Armstrong
Morgan & Morgan founder John Morgan knows he’s stirring the pot with his new billboard. That was his goal.
It’s not every day that you see someone commit the ultimate Philly sin. And it’s even more rare when it happens on a giant billboard right in the middle of Center City.
But that’s exactly what John Morgan has done with his latest advertisement for his Florida-based law firm, Morgan & Morgan.
“I’m Jawn Morgan,” reads the billboard on the Vine Street Expressway near the 23rd Street off-ramp.
If there’s one thing Philadelphians hate even more than someone taking a parking space they dug out during a snowstorm, it’s a non-Philadelphian messing around with something they hold near and dear. That sign dares to go where no out-of-towner should in the City of Brotherly Love: Acting like you’re from here when you’re not.
Morgan, whom I caught up with by telephone on Tuesday, knew he was stirring the pot.
“That was the idea,” he told me when I asked about it. “The goal is always to be remembered and be talked about and to be top of the mind.”
» READ MORE: Jawn is dead: The Philly word’s journey from quirky regionalism to overused cliche | The Angry Grammarian
Yeah, but jawn is a Philly thing. Literally — the word jawn loosely refers to a thing and has deep roots in the dialect of Black Philadelphia.
According to his LinkedIn page, Morgan is from Lake Mary, Fla., and before the billboard, he had never heard of the word jawn.
Not cool. If you wouldn’t use that word in casual conversation, you shouldn’t use it to try and make money off of it. People feel some type of way about that sort of thing.
“I’ve used it all my life, even as part of my radio moniker, the Classix Jawn,” said Mannwell D. Glenn, a 107.9 radio personality and Philly native. “A jawn is a noun. It’s an adjective. It’s everything a jawn needs to be. I kind of claimed it as a Black term that eventually all of Philadelphia … has embraced.”
Its use by outsiders is a form of a cultural appropriation.
“When I saw the billboard, I was just like, ‘Dude, come on. What is this?’” said Quincy Harris, former host of The Q show on Fox 29, who grew up in Germantown. “I feel like it was an attempt to market to us and he used it wrong. It just wasn’t right.”
“I hate when people use certain terminology, whether it’s Philly slang or it’s urban slang, to make it seem like … they’re connecting with us,” he said.
Morgan & Morgan is the same law firm that brought us the “Size Matters” billboards that were sprinkled around the city. That was a play on the fact that Morgan & Morgan boasts almost 1,000 lawyers spread out over 50 offices in 17 states. The 34-year-old mega-firm does all of its own creative work in-house.
“At one of the meetings, someone said, ‘I’ve got an idea. In Philadelphia, there’s a word that they throw around called jawn and it’s kind of a catchall. But it’s Philadelphia specific,” Morgan told me on the phone from Maui. “Everybody in Philadelphia uses this word. You’re John Morgan and we can play off of that.’”
Morgan did some research and decided to go with it. The sign on I-676 is only the first. More are on the way. “We are going to put them up all over Philly,” he said.
In a parochial city like Philly, you can spend upward of 15 years living in the same neighborhood like I did and still be considered a newcomer. Believe me, as a D.C. native who moved to Philly, no matter how many years I live in and around Philly, I know better than to try and pass myself off as a local. Even after being a columnist for years, you won’t hear me saying, “Give me that jawn.” The word just doesn’t sound natural when I say it — and I don’t want people looking at me funny.
Zalika U. Ibaorimi, a West Oak Lane native and a doctoral candidate in African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, grew up saying jawn but stopped using it after being told repeatedly by academic instructors that the African American vernacular term wasn’t standard English.
These days, it stops her when she hears the word being used out of turn.
“Even when I see certain Black people use it who are not from the area, I say ‘Ooh what’s going on,’” Ibaorimi told me Tuesday. “I’m still like ‘Hey, you’re not really from here, but I’m going to let it slide.’”
Ibaorimi, who penned a 2020 essay called “Jawn Theory” for the Society for Cultural Anthropology, says there’s something “very insidious” and “violent” about the way jawn has been taken over by the mainstream. From the #VoteThatJawn tool to entice young people to vote to an appearance on ABC’s new hit sitcom Abbott Elementary, the word jawn has become commonplace.
Still, using it to advertise a personal injury law firm feels off.
Morgan has different billboards planned for other cities and knew this one could potentially rile up Philadelphians. “There’s always somebody that’s going to have a problem with something. That’s just the way it is,” he told me.