Big Red's Mercy: The Shooting of Deborah Cotton and a Story of Race in America

The moving story of a New Orleans woman who fought for justice and her community even amidst one of the city's darkest moments.

Mark Hertsgaard and Deborah Cotton were strangers to one another, united only by a love of jazz and New Orlean’s distinctive Second Line tradition. And then, during a Mother’s Day parade, they were thrown together when two gunmen fired into the crowd…

Deborah Cotton—known to all as Big Red—was among the most grievously injured. She is the driving force of this deeply reported parable of two of America’s most deeply rooted issues. A racial justice activist in her forties who was born to a Black father and a white mother, Cotton was one of twenty people—including the author—shot in the biggest mass shooting in the modern history of New Orleans. Once one of the largest slave ports, the city has long been a vortex of violence and racism.

From her apparent deathbed, Big Red shocked observers by urging mercy for two young Black men accused of the attack. “Racism can kill Black people even when a Black finger pulls the trigger,” she tells Hertsgaard, who, she later said, is “called” to investigate what actually happened, and why.

Charismatic, complicated, and struck down in her prime, Big Red and her heroic life will captivate readers. In the wake of the shooting, she never stopped fighting as she sought to get to the core of this uniquely American maelstrom. Big Red's Mercy is an illuminating narrative that provides a human and unflinching look at modern America.