By Garry Blanson
“Mary Jane Harper cried last night!”
In case you were wondering who Mary Jane Harper is, and why you should care about her crying last night, she was a child character in a 1977 television movie which depicted the cruel reality of child abuse in American society and how things were getting out of hand.
As the years have gone by, we can now see how right the movie was about many of the things that are still happening to children in America in 2026. To make matters worse, several reports continue to state that child abuse in America has decreased, but they never report exactly how high child abuse currently is.
Furthermore, one report stated that the children at highest risk, and those with the highest rate of abuse, are children under the age of one year old. Therefore, I will go out on a limb and say that several Mary Jane Harpers cried last night.
With that said, on to this week’s Black pioneer.
Louise “Pudden” G. Tucker was born in 1910 to Tommy and Julia Gilbert in Wisner, Louisiana. She was a Black pioneer in Monroe and Ouachita Parish in the area of healthcare.
Not only was she the first Black female licensed practical nurse in Ouachita Parish, but she was also the first Black female licensed nursing home administrator in the parish as well. To this very day, many say that Louise helped set the bar for Black nursing home administrators in Monroe and Ouachita Parish.
In addition to serving as nursing home administrator of the Mary Gross Nursing Home in Monroe, Louisiana, for more than 40 years, Louise was a pillar of her community.
After uniting with First Missionary Baptist Church on March 2, 1975, she served faithfully in various areas of the church, including as chairperson of the Dorcas Missionary Circle and as a dedicated Sunday School teacher.
When Mrs. Louise “Pudden” G. Tucker passed away on March 27, 2005, she passed the torch of running the Mary Gross Nursing Home to her granddaughter, Louise Davis, and her great-grandson, Tony Wilson.
