Big Lou

Cast Bronze, 2005
16" x 22" x 26"

When you called her name, there was a certain drama in your voice.

Big Lou she was. One day Ole Massa decided he was gonna whip Big Lou and cut down on her uppity ways. You see, Big Lou had the reputation of whipping the hell out of a succession of overseers. It was believed that she could not be whipped at the slave whipping tree, because no one would dare hold her down, and she was known to reverse the punishment back to those that tried. Ole Massa was terrified of Big Lou-he would always give her orders through another person.

Many times he had considered having her sold, but she was too valuable, and he changed his mind in the end. She was known to place parts of her cotton in the sacks of her relatives, so that they would make their weight for the day. This did not set well with Ole Massa, and he grew tired of this large, troublesome woman. He just had to break her.

She was a superb animal handler, but one day as she was hitching up the mules, the animals became unruly, as if there were some evil afoot. Big Lou was the only one who could handle them. They glared wildly and screamed sounds she had never heard from them. They rared and kicked and tossed about something awful.

Moving swiftly behind her, the overseer raised the butt of his rifle and brought it down on the side of her head.

Big Lou was never the same. Last we heard of her she was sold down the river to the Deep South, where she spent the rest of her life as a slow-moving dimwit taking care of the children of her new owners.