A legendary figure who rivals the likes of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill in size and strength, John Henry is a character memorialized in African American folklore and the ballads of renowned artists from Johnny Cash to Paul Robeson and Bruce Springsteen. A steel driver charged with boring a tunnel through the mountainside for the Industrial Age’s railroad expansion, John Henry could not be outmatched, using his now legendary steel hammer to outperform even a steam-powered hammer in an epic race between man and machine that supposedly led to his victory and simultaneous death. Representative of the enduring spirit of the African American people despite their sociopolitical challenges and the racial climate of the post–Civil War age, he has become cemented in the American cultural imagination not only through work songs (also known as hammer songs) that keep alive his tale but also through literature such as the 1931 novel John Henry and its 1940 stage adaptation. Because of his supernatural strength and extraordinary achievement, John Henry has become as much a part of American lore as Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox—all integral examples of the tall-tale form and the embodiment of the hardworking American laborers (steel drivers, lumberjacks, cowboys, etc.) who ushered in the modern era.
Gaining popularity in American folklore beginning around the 1870s—the time of his supposed death—the tale of John Henry has earned a considerable amount of scholarly attention as historians and folklorists alike attempted to trace the historical roots of the legend. Scott Reynolds Nelson, for instance, locates the character in the historical person of John William Henry—a New Jersey–born free black later imprisoned for burglary and sent to work on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. In his 2006 book, Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend, Nelson recounts the circumstantial evidence he discovered while unearthing the tale. Here he contends that Henry’s body was likely buried among three hundred bodies discovered in 1992 near the Virginia State Penitentiary—the white house referenced in the legend. Nelson, once a history professor at the College of William and Mary, even challenged the conclusion of the tale by suggesting that Henry’s death would more than likely have been the result of a silicosis lung disease—an illness affecting many railway workers who breathed in the harmful dust of the mountains they were tunneling. This account is a direct contradiction to the legend itself, which suggests that John Henry died of exhaustion, a heart attack, or a burst blood vessel in his brain after accomplishing his otherwise insurmountable task.
Though Nelson’s explanation, based largely upon an incomplete and somewhat unverifiable historical record, may be more plausible, attributing Henry’s death as being a result of his epic feat is part of the timeless theme that has captured the hearts and minds of American readers as well as musicians. Working on the C&O Railway at the time of swift industrial change, John Henry embodied the human fighting spirit that could never be replaced by the types of machines produced in the Industrial Age. This theme is decidedly American. In a country always captivated by the plight of the struggling worker whose job is threatened by industry, the rise of new technologies, and now outsourcing, the tale of John Henry still has relevance among audiences today. He remains a symbol of the unique strength and endurance of the American laborer who fights to remain relevant in a world increasingly dominated by elaborate machines. This, however, is only one dimension of the John Henry tale. Specifically an African American figure, he became the embodiment of black strength and, like High John the Conqueror, he refused to be broken by the hardships he faced during the Reconstruction era.
Emerging at a pivotal time in American history, the story of John Henry is also important for its insight into the largely forgotten people who toiled to lay the tracks of the Southern railroad. With the vast spread of railroads in the latter years of the nineteenth century, more and more African American men became involved in laying tracks and tunneling through mountainous terrain for what became a veritable engine of American expansion into newer territories and a way to link the still fragmented North and South. Because his tale has reached such widespread American audiences young and old, the legend of John Henry has larger implications than just a memorable folktale. Through the ballads, work songs, novels, picture books, and story adaptations illustrating the journey of this legendary figure, the story of John Henry has also preserved the legacies of the men who might have worked alongside him—the men who filled those three hundred unmarked graves in the soil outside the state penitentiary. Perhaps this is why the tale is still shared today: it is a reminder of a past worth commemorating and honoring, even if John Henry’s struggle against the machine proves to be a work of pure fiction.
Other accounts suggest that the story of John Henry was not in fact a celebratory story as many readers have envisioned. These accounts suggest that the story was instead a cautionary tale designed to warn future railway workers of the dangers they would face in the field. Part of the songs railroad workers would sing to keep up their spirits and monitor their pace, the songs, according to this interpretation, indicated that those who violated the pace faced a similar fate as John Henry, ultimately working too fast and too hard for the human heart to handle. Essentially, this reading is supported by the very lyrics of the popular song itself, which declares, “This old hammer killed John Henry … but it won’t kill me. No, it won’t kill me.” Through this lens, the tale of John Henry can be considered, like much folklore of the time, a core part of the knowledge passed down across generations in the African American oral tradition. The work songs warned of John Henry’s disastrous downfall as part of a larger social education, similar to the fables of Aesop and the writings of Homer and Ovid—all of which served as part of the moral education of their respective societies.
Regardless of whether John Henry ever existed, the tale is representative of a trend in nineteenth-century folklore that depicted the superhuman laborer heavily involved in shaping and reshaping the physical landscape of the United States. Focused on the African American laborer, however, the tale of John Henry is somewhat unique, revealing the vital role that black communities also played in the nation’s expansion—a side of the story often lost amidst the political and racial upheaval of the post–Civil War years. The tale, like most folklore, is then a communal tale, never defined by a single author but rather constructed and shared by an entire community. These communities proved eager to preserve their own cultures in a medium dating back to early African cultures, long before the forced journey along the Middle Passage as slaves. Because these tales were rarely written, surviving tales, like those of John Henry, are therefore vital as early examples of an African American storytelling tradition later continued by authors like Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. Such works speak to the unique efforts of the African American people, once deprived of an education and a public venue to speak, to record their history in forms passed down from their elders such as the songs and accompanying dances that came to represent African American cultural expression.
For these reasons, according to some critics, John Henry is a much larger and more significant figure than his counterparts Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill. While the tale of Paul Bunyan is steeped in relative controversy—many of its characters were created by William B. Laughead in 1914 and 1916, thus giving rise to the term “fakelore” among critical scholars—the tale of John Henry never faced such controversy. The legend of John Henry has always remained intact, consistently depicting the eager and ambitious African American man as he worked in competition with a steam-powered hammer to prove the undying might of man. Because of this, his story has been captured in Arna Bontemps’s Book of Negro Folklore and other cultural works where his epic battle (and the larger struggles it represents) will always be remembered.
Christopher Allen Varlack
See also Folklore and Folktales; John the Conqueror (High John the Conqueror); Legends; Paul Bunyan; Pecos Bill; Supernaturalism in Legends and Folklore; Tall Tales
Further Reading
Chappell, Louis W. 1933. John Henry: A Folk-Lore Study. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press.
Johnson, Guy B. 1929. John Henry: Tracking Down a Negro Legend. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Nelson, Scott Reynolds. 2005. “Who Was John Henry? Railroad Construction, Southern Folklore, and the Birth of Rock and Roll.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas (Summer) 2 (2): 53–80.
Nelson, Scott Reynolds. 2006. Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend. Oxford: Oxford University Press.