John Henry (folklore): Difference between revisions
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==Cultural references== |
==Cultural references== |
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===Literature=== |
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Henry is the subject of the [[1931 in literature|1931]] [[Roark Bradford]] novel ''[[John Henry (novel)|John Henry]]'', illustrated by noted woodcut artist [[J. J. Lankes]]. It was adapted into a [[Musical theatre|stage musical]] in 1940, starring [[Paul Robeson]] in the title role. [[Colson Whitehead]]'s 2001 novel ''[[John Henry Days]]'' uses the John Henry myth as story background. |
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The legend of John Henry was the inspiration for the third version of the [[DC Comics]] superhero [[John Henry Irons|Steel]] — also known as [[Steel (John Henry Irons)|John Henry Irons]]. He is depicted fighting the [[Ku Klux Klan]] in the [[Southern United States]] in the 2003 limited series ''[[DC: The New Frontier]]'', set in the 1950s. |
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John Henry is also the character in a book called [[Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry]]. |
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John Henry is also a character in a short story entitled, “The Ballad of Eskimo Nell Revisited” by Jim Reader, which appears in the anthology, ''Ladies of Trade Town'', Lee Martindale (editor), HarpHaven Press, 2011 |
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In a book series called "The Clockwork Dark" by John Claude Bemis, a character named Conker is the son of John Henry. The series is based on American Folktales and Tall Tales. Instead of fighting a steam drill, Henry destroyed a terrible machine that threatened mankind. The machine was created by a villain called the Gog. |
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===Film=== |
===Film=== |
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In 1973, Nick Bosustow and David Adams co-produced an 11-minute animated short, ''The Legend of John Henry''<ref>Who's Who in Animated Cartoons by Jeff Lenburg, p. 33</ref> for [[Paramount Pictures]]. It featured narration by [[Roberta Flack]], who also sings a song detailing the legend of John Henry. It was nominated for an Oscar in 1974 for best short subject animated films. |
In 1973, Nick Bosustow and David Adams co-produced an 11-minute animated short, ''The Legend of John Henry''<ref>Who's Who in Animated Cartoons by Jeff Lenburg, p. 33</ref> for [[Paramount Pictures]]. It featured narration by [[Roberta Flack]], who also sings a song detailing the legend of John Henry. It was nominated for an Oscar in 1974 for best short subject animated films. |
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Revision as of 15:51, 25 July 2011
John Henry is an American folk hero, notable for having raced against a steam powered hammer and won, only to die in victory with his hammer in his hand. He has been the subject of numerous songs, stories, plays, and novels.
Background
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Like other "Big Men" such as Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill, John Henry also served as a mythical representation of a group within the melting pot of the 19th-century working class. In the most popular version of the story, Henry is born into the world big and strong weighing 330 pounds. He grows to become the greatest "steel-driver" in the mid-century push to erect the railroads across the mountains to the West. When the owner of the railroad buys a steam-powered hammer to do the work of his mostly black driving crew, to save his job and the jobs of his men, John Henry challenges the owner to a contest: himself alone versus the steam hammer. John Henry beats the machine, but exhausted, collapses and dies.
In modern depictions John Henry is often portrayed as hammering down rail spikes, but older versions depict him as being born with a hammer in his hand; driving blasting holes into rock, part of the process of excavating railroad tunnels and cuttings.
In almost all versions of the story, John Henry is a black man and serves as a folk hero for all American working-class people, representing their marginalization during changes entering the modern age in America. While the character may or may not have been based on a real person, Henry became an important symbol of the working class. His story is usually seen as an archetypal illustration of the futility of fighting the technological progress that was evident in the 19th century upset of traditional physical labor roles. Some labor advocates interpret the legend as illustrating that even the most skilled workers of time-honored practices are marginalized when companies are more interested in efficiency and production than in their employees' health and well-being.[dubious – discuss] Although John Henry proved himself more powerful than the steam-drill, he worked himself to death and was replaced by the machine anyway. Thus the legend of John Henry has been a staple of American labor and mythology for well over one hundred years.
History
The truth about John Henry as the strongest man alive is obscured by time and myth, but one legend has it that he was a slave born in Missouri in the 1840s and fought his notable battle with the steam hammer along the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in Talcott, West Virginia. A statue and memorial plaque have been placed along a highway south of Talcott as it crosses over the tunnel in which the competition may have taken place.
The railroad historian Reagan C. Long found that there were multiple tunnels along the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Railway. Also, the C&O employed multiple black men who went by the name "John Henry" at the time that those tunnels were being built. Though he could not find any documentary evidence, he believes on the basis of anecdotal evidence that the contest between man and machine did indeed happen at the Talcott, West Virginia, site because of the presence of all three (a man named John Henry, a tunnel named Big Bend, and a steam-powered drill) at the same time at that place.[1]
The book Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend by Scott Reynolds Nelson, an associate professor of history at the College of William and Mary, argues that John William Henry, (#497) a prisoner in the Virginia penitentary, leased by the warden to work on the C&O Railway in the 1870s, is the basis for the legendary John Henry[2]
Nelson points out that a steam drill race at the Big Bend Tunnel would have been impossible because railroad records do not indicate a steam drill being used there.[3] Instead, he believes the contest took place at the Lewis Tunnel, between Talcott and Millboro, Virginia, where prisoners worked beside steam drills.[4] Nelson also believes that an early version of the ballad that refers to John Henry's grave as being at "the white house", "in sand", and somewhere that locomotives roar, indicates that he was buried at the Virginia penitentiary, where unmarked graves have been found.[5]
According to Nelson:
....workers managed their labor by setting a "stint," or pace, for it. Men who violated the stint were shunned....Here was a song that told you what happened to men who worked too fast: they died ugly deaths; their entrails fell on the ground. You sang the song slowly, you worked slowly, you guarded your life, or you died.[6]
Retired chemistry professor and folklorist John Garst has argued that the contest instead happened at the Coosa Mountain Tunnel or the Oak Mountain Tunnel of the Columbus and Western Railway (now part of Norfolk Southern) near Leeds, Alabama on September 20, 1887. Based on documentation that corresponds with the account of C. C. Spencer, who claimed in the 1920s to have witnessed the contest, Garst speculates that John Henry may have been a man named Henry who was born a slave to P.A.L. Dabney, the father of the chief engineer of that railroad, in 1850.[7] The city of Leeds is making plans to honor John Henry's legend with an exhibit in its Bass House historical museum and with a planned annual festival culminating on the third Saturday of September.[8][9]
Though no documentary proof has emerged to rule out either theory, both Talcott and Leeds use their supposed connections with the legend in promotional and educational literature and events. Every year, on the weekend after the Fourth of July, the town of Talcott hosts a celebration known as "John Henry Days." The weekend includes many yard sales, a huge parade, fireworks, and a rubber ducky race against a paddle steamer.
According to family history of John W. Holder's descendants, Polly Holder was cook for the work crews at Talcott, West Virginia. John Holder was the crew foreman that broke the light hole through on the Great Bend Tunnel at Talcott.[10]
Cultural references
Film
In 1973, Nick Bosustow and David Adams co-produced an 11-minute animated short, The Legend of John Henry[11] for Paramount Pictures. It featured narration by Roberta Flack, who also sings a song detailing the legend of John Henry. It was nominated for an Oscar in 1974 for best short subject animated films.
See also
References
- ^ Long, Roy C. (1991). "Big Bend Times". C&O History.
- ^ Nelson, p. 39
- ^ Grimes, William. "Taking Swings at a Myth, With John Henry the Man", New York Times, Books section, October 18, 2006.
- ^ Downes, Lawrence. "John Henry Days", New York Times, Books section, April 18, 2008.
- ^ "John Henry - The Story - Lewis Tunnel". Ibiblio.org. 2006-07-13. Retrieved 2010-07-20.
- ^ Nelson, p. 32
- ^ Garst, John (2002). "Chasing John Henry in Alabama and Mississippi: A Personal Memoir of Work in Progress". Tributaries: Journal of the Alabama Folklife Association. 5: 92–129.
- ^ Thornton, William (September 3, 2006). "Leeds' plans for saluting Henry". Birmingham News.
{{cite news}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - ^ Clowers, Don (September 14, 2006). "John Henry - Leeds connection doesn't exist". Leeds News.
{{cite news}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - ^ Guy Johnson, John Henry, the search for a Negro Legend, pub. 1920
- ^ Who's Who in Animated Cartoons by Jeff Lenburg, p. 33
Further reading
- Johnson, Guy B. (1929) John Henry: Tracking Down a Negro Legend. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press
- Chappell, Louis W. (1933) John Henry; A Folk-Lore Study. Reprinted 1968. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press
- Keats, Ezra Jack (1965) John Henry, An American Legend. New York: Pantheon Books.
- Williams, Brett (1983) John Henry: A Bio-Bibliography by Brett Williams. Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press
- Nelson, Scott. (Summer 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 Vol. 2. No. 2, pp. 53–79.
- Nelson, Scott (2006). Steel Drivin' Man. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195300109.
- Garst, John (November 27, 2006) "On the Trail of the Real John Henry". History News Network. (includes rebuttal by Scott Nelson)
- Smith, Susan (2010) The Captain and John HenryXlibris press
External links
