Annie Christmas

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Annie Christmas, also known as flatboat Annie, is a Louisiana folk tale hero. She's said to be seven feet tall and incredibly strong, a Black woman who captains a keelboat. She is sometimes seen as the female counterpart to John Henry, another legendary strong worker, and some stories may be based on a real person.

Different tellings exist. One account by Herbert Asbury says she started as a white New Orleans woman who became a Black demigod in Black stories. In white versions she is murdered in a gambling house; in Black tradition some say she killed herself for love. The tales show her ignoring women's rules, drinking a lot, and ruling over men who challenge her. She wears a pearl necklace, and each pearl marks a defeated challenger. She is unmarried but has twelve sons who work on her boat. Some versions say she is killed by a hundred attackers.

The Annie Christmas figure appears in later works, including a 1993 novel by Michelle Cliff with a character named Annie Christmas, and a song for the musical Whistle Down the Wind by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Steinman in 1996.