John Henry is an American folk hero and tall tale. Henry worked as a "steel-driver"—a man tasked with hammering and chiseling rock in the construction of tunnels for railroad tracks. In the legend, John Henry's prowess as a steel-driver was measured in a race against a steam powered hammer, which he won only to die in victory with his hammer in his hand. The story of John Henry has been the subject of numerous songs, stories, plays, and novels.[1][2]
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The legend of John Henry has been compared to that of other American "Big Men", such as Paul Bunyan[3] and Pecos Bill.[4] John Henry's heroism is associated with several elements: his strength and grit as a working-class common man, his status as a hero to African American laborers, and his allegorical depiction of "the tragedy of man versus machine" and other aspects of modernization.[3][4]
There are many versions of John Henry's story. In almost all versions of the story, John Henry is a black man of exceptional physical gifts, a former slave,[1] possibly born in Tennessee.[3] Henry becomes the greatest "steel-driver" in the mid-nineteenth-century push to expand railroads from the east coast of the United States, across and through the mountains, to the frontier West. However, the owner of the railroad buys a steam-powered hammer to do the work of his mostly black steel-driving crew. To save his job and the jobs of his men, John Henry challenges the owner to a contest: Henry will race the steam-powered hammer. John Henry beats the machine, but exhausted, collapses and dies.
The historicity of any aspects of the John Henry legend is subject to wide debate.[1][2] It is commonly stated that Henry's rail work, including his race against the steam hammer, occurred while working along the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway.[3] In particular, Henry is claimed to have raced the steam hammer during the construction of Big Bend tunnel near Talcott, West Virginia between 1869 and 1871.[1][5][6] Talcott holds a yearly festival named for Henry and a statue and memorial plaque have been placed along a highway south of Talcott as it crosses over the Big Bend tunnel.[5]
In Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend, Scott Reynolds Nelson, an associate professor of history at the College of William and Mary, argues that John William Henry (prisoner #497 in the Virginia penitentiary, released by the warden to work on the C&O Railway in the 1870s) is the basis for the legendary John Henry.[7]:39 Nelson asserts that a steam drill race at the Big Bend Tunnel would have been impossible because railroad records do not indicate a steam drill being used there.[4] Instead, he believes the contest took place at the Lewis Tunnel, between Talcott and Millboro, Virginia, where prison slaves worked beside steam drills.[8] Nelson also believes that an early version of the ballad that refers to John Henry's grave as being at "the white house", "in sand", and somewhere that locomotives roar, indicates that Henry was buried at the Virginia penitentiary, where unmarked graves have been found.[9]
According to Nelson:
...workers managed their labor by setting a "stint," or pace, for it. Men who violated the stint were shunned...Here was a song that told you what happened to men who worked too fast: they died ugly deaths; their entrails fell on the ground. You sang the song slowly, you worked slowly, you guarded your life, or you died.[7]:32
Other research has placed Henry's famous race near Leeds, Alabama. Retired chemistry professor and folklorist John Garst, of the University of Georgia, has argued that the contest instead happened at the Coosa Mountain Tunnel or the Oak Mountain Tunnel of the C&O Railway (now part of Norfolk Southern Railway) near Leeds on September 20, 1887. Based on documentation that corresponds with the account of C. C. Spencer, who claimed in the 1920s to have witnessed the contest, Garst speculates that John Henry may have been a man named Henry who was born a slave to P.A.L. Dabney, the father of the chief engineer of that railroad, in 1850.[10] Since 2007, the city of Leeds has honored John Henry's legend during an annual September festival, held third weekend in September, called the Leeds Downtown Folk Festival & John Henry Celebration.[11]
Garst and Nelson have debated the merits of their divergent research conclusions.[12] Other claims have been made over the years that places Henry and his contest in Kentucky or Jamaica.[13]
The tale of John Henry has been used as a symbol in many cultural movements, including labor movements[14] and the Civil Rights Movement.[15]
| “ | John Henry is a symbol of physical strength and endurance, of exploited labor, of the dignity of a human being against the degradations of the machine age, and of racial pride and solidarity. During World War II his image was used in U.S. government propaganda as a symbol of social tolerance and diversity.[16] | ” |
The story of John Henry is traditionally told through two types of songs: ballads, commonly referred to as "The Ballad of John Henry", and work songs known as hammer songs, each with wide-ranging and varying lyrics.[2][13] Some songs, and some early folk historian research, conflate the songs about John Henry with those of John Hardy, a West Virginian outlaw.[13] Ballads about John Henry's life typically contain four major components: a premonition by John Henry as a child that steel-driving would lead to his death, the lead-up to and the results of the race against the steam hammer, Henry's death and burial, and the reaction of John Henry's wife.[13]
It is unclear when, where, and by whom the ballad of John Henry was first recorded for others to hear.
Songs featuring the story of John Henry have been recorded by many blues, folk, and rock musicians of different ethnic backgrounds. Many notable musicians have recorded John Henry ballads, including: Harry Belafonte, Furry Lewis,[2] Big Bill Broonzy,[2] Pink Anderson,[13] Fiddlin' John Carson,[13] Uncle Dave Macon,[13] J. E. Mainer,[13] Leon Bibb,[13] Lead Belly,[13] Johnny Cash, Joe Bonamassa,[13] Woody Guthrie,[13] Paul Robeson,[16] Pete Seeger,[16] Van Morrison,[16] Bruce Springsteen,[16] Gillian Welch,[16] the Drive-By Truckers,[16] Ramblin' Jack Elliott,[13] and Jerry Lee Lewis.[13]
Henry is the subject of the 1931 Roark Bradford novel John Henry, illustrated by noted woodcut artist J. J. Lankes. The novel was adapted into a stage musical in 1940, starring Paul Robeson in the title role.[2] According to Steven Carl Tracy, Bradford's works were influential in broadly popularizing the John Henry legend beyond railroad and mining communities and outside of African American oral histories.[2] In a 1933 article published in The Journal of Negro Education, Bradford's John Henry was criticized for "making over a folk-hero into a clown."[17] A 1948 obituary for Bradford described John Henry as "a better piece of native folklore than Paul Bunyan."[18]
Ezra Jack Keats's John Henry: An American Legend, published in 1965, is a notable picture book chronicling the history of John Henry and portraying him as the "personification of the medieval Everyman who struggles against insurmountable odds and wins."[15]
Colson Whitehead's 2001 novel John Henry Days uses the John Henry myth as story background. Whitehead fictionalized the Talcott, West Virginia, John Henry Days festival and the release of the John Henry postage stamp in 1996.[19]
The legend of John Henry was the inspiration for the third version of the DC Comics superhero Steel — also known as John Henry Irons, created by writer Louise Simonson and artist Jon Bogdanove. He is depicted fighting the Ku Klux Klan in the Southern United States in the 2003 limited series DC: The New Frontier, set in the 1950s.
Stop-motion animator George Pal's 7-minute short film John Henry and the Inky-Poo was nominated for an Academy Award in 1947 for Best Animated Short Film.
In 1973, Nick Bosustow and David Adams co-produced an 11-minute animated short, The Legend of John Henry[20]:33 for Paramount Pictures. The film featured narration by Roberta Flack, who also sings a song detailing the legend of John Henry, and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1974 for Best Animated Short Film.
John Henry was played by Roger Aaron Brown in the 1995 live-action Disney movie Tall Tale; in this film, Henry is depicted as losing the battle with the steam powered hammer.
In 2000, Walt Disney Animation Studios released John Henry, a short subject film directed by Mark Henn, with music from Sounds of Blackness and voice acting from Alfre Woodard, Geoffrey Jones and Tim Hodge. The film won a 2000 Giffoni Film Festival award and was nominated at the 2000 Annie Awards. An edited version was released as part of a video compilation entitled Disney's American Legends in 2002.
In 1996, the U.S. Post Office issued a John Henry 32-cent postage stamp. It was part of a set honoring American folk heroes that included Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill and Casey at the Bat.[21]
The American race horse John Henry was named after the legendary figure.
The band They Might Be Giants named their 1994 album John Henry as a reference to the fable's "man versus machine" theme. (The album marked the band's switch from using an electronic drum machine to a human drummer)
"John Henry in Leeds", Leeds Folk Festival