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John Henry is an American folk hero. An African American freedman, he is said to have worked as a "steel-driving man"—a man tasked with hammering a steel drill into a rock to make holes for explosives to blast the rock in constructing a railroad tunnel.
May 13, 2024 · John Henry, hero of a widely sung African American folk ballad. It describes his contest with a steam drill, in which John Henry crushed more rock than did the machine but died “with his hammer in his hand.”
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
May 9, 2018 · A towering, legendary American working-class folk heroes, John Henry represents not only the nineteenth-century struggle of the human spirit against the coming industrial era but also African-American resistance to white labor domination.
Learn about the life and legacy of John Henry, a former prisoner who worked on the C&O Railroad and became a legend in folk songs. Historian Scott Nelson reveals how John Henry's story reflects the history of work, resistance, and protest in America.
John Henry: The Steel Driving Man - American Folklore. Retold by S.E. Schlosser. A West Virginia Legend. Now John Henry was a mighty man, yes sir. He was born a slave in the 1840’s but was freed after the war. He went to work as a steel-driver for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, don’t ya know.
Dec 9, 2020 · Whether you know the story of John Henry or not, you've almost certainly heard people sing about him. That is because his folkloric tale has captured the imaginations of artists, particularly musicians, for nearly 100 years, and the legend has come to be the subject matter of numerous songs.
A race was set: man against machine. John Henry won, the legend says, driving 14 feet to the drill's nine. He died shortly after, some say from exhaustion, some say from a stroke. So why would one man - one among a hundred years of other men and other stories - emerge as such a central figure in folklore and song? For this, we can only speculate.
