Loosh

Loosh is the son of Joby and Louvinia, the husband of Philadelphy, and the uncle of Ringo. Loosh is the only African-American on the Sartoris plantation who openly desires the freedom for slaves offered by the Yankees (and one of the few rebellious blacks in the whole of the Yoknapatawpha canon). He does not feel any allegiance to the Sartoris family, and tells Union troops where to find the silver that Granny tried to hide. When Granny accuses him of betrayal, in his rough dialect he makes an eloquent speech defending his action and his right to be free: "Let God ax John Sartoris who the man name that give me to him" (75). He self-emancipates himself by leaving the plantation to follow the Union army when it comes through Yoknapatawpha during the Civil War, though in the novel's final story, set after the war, he has returned to Sartoris.