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As the rail workers celebrated, John Henry toppled over and died from exhaustion. An amazing story of the human spirit and work ethic, yes, but was John Henry a real person? Most historians agree that he was, as thousands of African-Americans worked on the railroad, with hundreds perishing during the drilling of the Great Bend Tunnel .
Mar 7, 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 the machine did but died ‘with his hammer in his hand.’ Writers and artists see in John Henry a symbol of the worker’s foredoomed struggle against the machine.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
According to the ballad that made him famous, John Henry did battle with a steam-powered drill, beat the machine, and died. Folklorists have long thought John Henry to be mythical, but historian Scott Nelson has discovered that he was a real person—a nineteen-year-old from New Jersey who was convicted of theft in a Virginia court in 1866 ...
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Jul 24, 2018 · Henry emerged as the victor, but he tragically collapsed, then died. How much of the song is true and how much is folklore is debated by historians, but a memorial was erected in Talcott in 1972, where Henry was thought to have died.
A stanza of the ballad says that John Henry is taken to "the white house" and buried "in the sand" near a railroad. There are just a few problems with the John W. Henry story. First, "John...
- John Garst
John Henry beat the steam drill and later died of exhaustion. The Great Bend Tunnel was completed on September 12, 1872, and remained in service until 1974. The tunnel and the man have been cemented into the annals of time through The Ballad of John Henry .
Prison records for John William Henry stopped in 1873, suggesting that he was kept on the record books until it was clear that he was not coming back and had died. Nelson stresses that John Henry would have been representative of the many hundreds of convict laborers who were killed in unknown circumstances tunneling through the mountains or ...