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Friday's Labor Folklore

The Legend of John Henry

John Henry Park, Talcott, West Virginia

NPS photo/Dave Bien

When the Civil War ended the big railroad companies decided to construct railroads throughout the land. To do this they needed workers -- laborers to lay the track and drill the tunnels through the rugged countryside.


In 1870 the C & O Railroad decided to dig a tunnel through the Big Bend Mountain in West Virginia. They hired 1,000 "free workingmen" -- in other words newly-emancipated Black men who needed jobs and were used to hard work and long hours. Because of the brutal working conditions in the tunnel and the work camp between 200 to 300 these men would die by 1872 when the tunnel was completed.


John Henry was hired at the Big Bend tunnel when he was in his early thirties. Formerly enslaved in Virginia or North Carolina, he quickly became known and respected by his fellow workers as a skilled steel driver.


Drilling through solid rock, deep inside of a mountain, was extremely difficult work. Two men -- a driller or a steel driver, and his buddy,

a shaker -- worked as a team. The driller hit a long steel drill with his hammer and the shaker held it against the rock, turning it ever so often.


The work required careful coordination between the two men for the technique was to hammer the steel drill and turn it in a rhythm-like fashion. After a deep hole was drilled into the rock, powder was inserted and then detonated.


John Henry could strike his nine-pound hammer harder, faster, and longer than anyone else in camp. His "ringing hammer" was often talked about by his fellow tunnel workers. Some said Big John Henry could swing two hammers -- a feat considered almost impossible by everyone.


In order to measure the strokes of their hammers, the steel-drivers sang songs. From deep inside the mountain, in the dreary darkness, you could hear the men singing:


Take this hammer, hunh,

Take it to the captain, hunh,

Tell him I'm gone, boys, hunh.

Tell him I'm gone.


Click here to listen to Take this Hammer sung by Leadbelly.


One day the engineers of the C & O devised a plan to experiment with a brand-new device, the Burleigh Steam Drill. This drill was driven by steam, not muscle, and had been on the scene for only a few years. In order to test this new invention, they chose the east portal of the Big Bend Tunnel in West Virginia.






The

Steam

Drill

Like the hard rock miners of the West, tunnel workers often held contests to see who the best steel-driver was in camp. The contest planned at Big Bend would go down in history because the company challenged John Henry to beat the steam drill.


What happened next is described in the John Henry ballad.

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 the new-fangled, steam-powered machine. 


The man that invented the steam drill,

He thought he was mighty fine,

But John Henry he made fourteen feet

While the steam drill only made nine, Lord, Lord

The steam drill only made nine.


John Henry hammered on the mountain

Till his hammer was striking fire.

He drove so hard he broke his poor heart,

Then he laid down his hammer and he died, Lord, Lord,

He laid down and his hammer and he died.


Is the John Henry legend is true? This is the subject of fierce debate.

In the early 1900s folksong collectors began reporting on various versions of the John Henry ballad. Two professors -- Louis Chappel of West Virginia University (1928) and Guy Johnson of the University of North Carolina (1933) -- tried to find historical evidence of the famous contest. While they identified over 60 versions of the song, much of the personal testimony they collected was conflicting.


But John Henry was a real person. He was one of thousands of African American workers who built the railroad and its tunnels. His story has been represented in fiction, art and theater. The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress has collected over 100 versions of the Ballad of John Henry, the most widely-recorded folk song in the United States.


The greatest hero in American folklore is a Black worker who with great skill, strength and a big heart had the courage to challenge the machine and win.


He died but his hammer is still ringing.





John Henry

by

Josh White



The Death of John Henry

Historians believe that John Henry died at the Great Bend Tunnel. It is unlikely that he died from exhaustion after the contest, but fell victim to one of many hazards. Hundreds of workers died in rock falls and explosions. Even more suffered from "tunnel sickness" or silicosis. This disease is the result of excessive inhalation of dust from sandstone rocks. Some stories suggest that it was silicosis that took John Henry in the end. The workers who died building the tunnel now rest in unmarked graves at the tunnel's entrance. Above their graves, a statue of John Henry stands as the champion of these working men. Visitors to Talcott can see the statue standing outside the Great Bend Tunnel.

-- The Legend of John Henry, National Park Service brochure



Until the lions have their own historians,

the story of the hunt will always

glorify the hunter.

Painting of John Henry by Palmer Hayden.


Sources I used: The True Story of John Henry, Talkin' Union, January 1982; Songs of Work & Protest by Edith Fowke & Joe Glazer, 1960, Long Steel Rail : the railroad in American folksong by Norm Cohen, 1981; Treasury of Southern Folklore edited by B.A. Botkin, 1980; "Steel Drivin' Man, John Henry" by Scott Reynolds Nelson, Virginia Museum of History & Culture (online).


In 1931 a parallel tunnel was built to accomodate the double-tracking of the

C & O mainline. The Big Ben Tunnel, completed in 1872, remained in service until 1974.


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