If Virginia is not the right place, Alabama is. Finally, no legend, testimony, or ballad version explicitly places John Henry at Lewis Tunnel. Convicts who died there were probably buried there, not at the penitentiary. There is no evidence that anyone at Lewis Tunnel raced a steam drill. Who could resist the idea that he was so important that he was put where our President, when he faced a difficult problem, could stroll out to visit his grave for inspiration? If "white house" had been part of the original ballad, versions in which John Henry is buried elsewhere would not exist. In the ballad, having John Henry buried at the "white house" is too good to be true. Third, because "John Henry" is so common, finding it among the more than two hundred convicts at Lewis Tunnel in 1870 is not unexpected and carries little logical force. How many little guys were famous steel drivers? Probably none. Henry story.įirst, "John Henry Something" was a very common name, much more common than "John Something Henry." Accordingly, the historic person is more likely to have been "John Henry Something" than "John W. There are just a few problems with the John W. A stanza of the ballad says that John Henry is taken to "the white house" and buried "in the sand" near a railroad. His body was sent back to the penitentiary and he was buried in a mass grave by a white workhouse near a railroad. He was leased in 1868 to work on the construction of the C & O railroad, 1868-72, at Lewis Tunnel, where he raced a steam drill and died.
#BLACK MAN DRIVING RAILROAD STORY DRIVER#
In the Virginia story, the legendary steel driver was John William Henry, a convict at the old Virginia Penitentiary, Richmond. Virginia and Alabama must duke it out over the historicity of "America's greatest single piece of folklore" (John A. In my opinion, West Virginia and Jamaica are no longer serious contenders. In this decade Scott Nelson has asserted death occurred in Virginia. MacEdward Leach writing some thirty years later said Jamaica. He died in at least ten states and Jamaica! Received wisdom, from Johnson and Chappell, says he passed away in West Virginia. Testimony and ballad versions vary wildly and are rife with contradictions.
Nothing in this mass of data can be assumed to be reliable. Is any of this true? If so, or if the legend sprang from some other event involving a real person, who and where was he?īy 1933 Guy Johnson, Louis Chappell, and a few others had obtained over sixty versions of "John Henry" and a great deal of personal testimony. "He drove so hard that he broke his heart / He laid down his hammer and he died." "John Henry made fourteen feet / While the steam drill only made nine." Then he died. John Henry said, "Before I'll let that steam drill beat me down / I'll die with my hammer in my hand." With human skill, muscle, endurance, and determination, he drilled faster than a new-fangled, steam-powered machine. In tunnel boring the rock was blasted away by explosives packed into drilled holes. John Henry was a steel driver, a man who used a sledge hammer to pound steel drills to make holes in rock. Why is so much made of a poor black laborer? Because his mighty effort represents the best of the human spirit. He obviously inspired the creation of Steel, aka John Henry Irons, one of Superman's comic-book successors. He is celebrated in novels, poems, cartoons, comics, paintings, sculptures, movies, etc., and he is reinvented.
John Henry is a hero to everyone, especially African Americans and labor-union members. Aaron Copeland used the melody in his composition, "John Henry," for symphony orchestra. Collections and recordings number in the many hundreds. To folklorists it is a "ballad," a story told in song.
Convicted and fined $21.50, he "put the court on notice that it was a piece of malice on the part of the neighbors and not their objection to 'John Henry' that caused his arrest."īill was right. He recited that stanza and said you sing it again if you want a longer song. He had drunkenly "shouted and sung bad songs." Bill admitted to one song, an inoffensive stanza of "John Henry" he had known since childhood. According to an old newspaper account (it was in the Atlanta Constitution) granite cutter Bill Hendricks appeared in court on September 1, 1913, to face charges of disturbing the neighborhood.
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