John Henry

John Henry is an African-American folk hero who has been the subject of numerous songs, stories, plays, and novels.

Like other "Big Men" such as Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and Iron John, John Henry served as a mythical representation of a particular group within the melting pot of the 19th-century working class. In the most popular story of his life, Henry is born into the world big and strong. He grows to be one of the greatest "steel-drivers" in the railroad-building age. As the story goes, the owner of the railroad buys a steam-powered hammer to do the work of his driving crew. In a bid to save his job and the jobs of his men, John Henry challenges the machine to a contest. John Henry out-drives the steam hammer, but in the process, he succumbs to exhaustion and dies. Older songs refer to him driving blasting holes into rock rather than driving spikes into rail ties.

The truth about John Henry is obscured by time and myth, but one account identifies him as a slave born in Alabama in the 1840s and fought his famous battle with the steam hammer along the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in Talcott, West Virginia. A statue and memorial plaque have been placed along a highway south of Talcott as it crosses over the tunnel in which the competition may have taken place.

The railroad historian Roy C. Long found that there were multiple Big Bend Tunnels along the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Railway. Also, the C&O employed multiple black men who went by the name "John Henry" at the time that those tunnels were being built. Though he could not find any documentary evidence, he believes on the basis of anecdotal evidence that the contest between man and machine did indeed happen at the Talcott, West Virginia site due to the presence of all three (a man named John Henry, a tunnel named Big Bend, and a steam-powered drill) at the same time at that place.¹

The part-time folklorist John Garst has argued that the contest instead happened at the Coosa Tunnel or the Oak Mountain Tunnel of the Columbus and Western Railway (now part of Norfolk Southern) near Leeds on September 20, 1887. Based on railroad documents that correspond with the account of C. C. Spencer, who claims to have witnessed the contest, he 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 1844.² The city of Leeds is making plans to honor John Henry's legend with an exhibit in its Bass House historical museum and with a planned symposium and festival on September 20, 2007.³

While he may or may not have been a real character, Henry became an important symbol of the working man. His story can be seen as an archetypically tragic illustration of the futility of fighting the technological progress so evident in the ongoing 19th century upset of traditional physical labor roles. Some labor advocates interpret the legend as saying that even if you are the most heroic worker of time-honored practices, management remains more interested in efficiency and production than in your health and well-being; though John Henry worked himself to death, they replaced him with a machine anyway. Thus the legend of John Henry has been a staple of leftist politics, labor organizing and American counter-culture for well over a hundred years.

In popular culture

Songs featuring the story of John Henry have been sung by many blues, folk, and rock musicians, including Leadbelly, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Mississippi John Hurt, Woody Guthrie, Big Bill Broonzy, Odetta, Johnny Cash, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Fred McDowell, John Fahey, Harry Belafonte, Roberta Flack, Dave Van Ronk, and the Drive-By Truckers.

In 2000, Walt Disney Feature Animation completed a short subject film based on John Henry, produced at the satellite studio in Orlando, Florida, directed by Mark Henn, written by Shirley Pierce and produced by Steven Keller. Keller, Henn and Pierce worked collaboratively with the Grammy Award winning group "The Sounds of Blackness" to create all new songs for the film. The film also featured the voice talent of actress Alfre Woodard. "John Henry" created a strong positive response around the animation community, won several film festivals both domestically and abroad, and was one of seven finalists for the 2001 academy awards in its category.

However, Disney was uneasy about releasing a short about a black folk hero created by an almost completely white production team, and aside from film festivals, industry screenings and limited theater screenings required for academy award consideration, a slightly cut down version of John Henry was released only as part of a video compilation entitled Disney American Legends in 2001. This became the nation's top-selling children's video for several weeks upon its release. Disney Educational Productions has also made the film available as a stand-alone product for video use in schools. And the film is often shown on The Disney Channel, especially during Black History Month.

References

• "John Henry (folklore)." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 8 Sep 2006, 02:39 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 Sep 2006 [1].

1. Long, Roy C. (1991) "Big Bend Times". C&O History
2. Garst, John (2002). "Chasing John Henry in Alabama and Mississippi: A Personal Memoir of Work in Progress". Tributaries: Journal of the Alabama Folklife Association. No. 5. pp. 92–129
3. Thornton, William (September 3, 2006) "Leeds' plans for saluting Henry." Birmingham News.

External links

• John Henry - The Steel Driving Man Includes a page with the updated abstract of Garst (2002) above.
• John Henry, Present at the Creation
• John Henry Statue at Heritagepreservation.org
• Folklore Researcher Places Legendary John Henry in Alabama