Since black convicts could be forced to do contract labor, John Henry was assigned to the C&O, which could not attract workers at $1 a day to blast through rock and kick up lethal clouds of silica dust. Work began on the mile-and-a-quarter tunnel in 1870, and the project was completed three years later. The tunnel was carved through the Big Bend Mountain so the railroad could go through it instead of around it. The story has him driving railroad spikes. Songfacts: This folk song tells the story of John Henry, an enormous man who worked on the Big Bend Tunnel near Talcott, West Virginia. Although Wiseman did not reside at his store, prosecutors indicted John Henry for housebreaking as well. John Henry challenges the machines operator to a 3-mile contest to save the mens jobs and their future land. He was charged with a felony (stealing property worth $20 or more), even though an auditor had estimated the total value of goods at Wiseman’s at the time at about $50. Henry was arrested in 1866 for a theft at Wiseman’s grocery store. People still talk about the night John Henry was born. This edited article about Big John Henry originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 794 published on 2nd April 1977. The stories about John Henry are not just tall tales, for they are. Nelson demonstrates that his John Henry was railroaded by the racists who ran the criminal justice system. An African American man named John Henry was the hero of former slaves and the people who built the railroads. John Henry is an African-American folk hero who symbolizes strength and determination. In “Steel Drivin’ Man,” Nelson can make only a circumstantial case that his John Henry – who was 5-foot-1 1/4 – was “the man.” But his deft detective work, in effect, serves as a search warrant, authorizing him to drill deep down into the scorched earth of the South in the years after the Civil War to lay bare the lives of blacks under the notorious Black Codes. Contracted out to work for the C&O Railroad in 1868, prisoner number 497 disappeared from the records in 1874 – around the time the legend appeared. Nineteen years old, with a scar on each arm, John Henry was serving 10 years in the Virginia State Penitentiary. A professor of history at the College of William and Mary, Scott Reynolds Nelson, has found a John William Henry in the manuscript census for 1870. But until now, no one knew whether a real man was a model for the myth. John Henry has remained an icon, especially among young blacks. John Henry was a hammer-man whose job was to drive a steel drill into the rock, building tunnels through mountains to allow the railroad to pass on through. In the 1930s, the “steel drivin’ man” may have been the model for the man of steel – Superman. In almost 200 folk songs, John Henry drives steel into the Allegheny Mountains for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad in a race against a steam drill: “John Henry, O John Henry, Blood am runnin’ red! Falls right down with his hammah to th’ groun’, Says, ‘I’ve beat him to the bottom but I’m dead.”‘ Originally a cautionary tale about hard work, suffering and death, the ballad turned heroic in the 20th century.īigger and more boastful, John Henry represented the powerful potential of the working class. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu
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