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Who was John Henry?
Why is John Henry a hero?
Was John Henry a steel drivin' man?
Was John Henry a strong man?
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, sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary, and put ...
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. And John Henry was the strongest, the most powerful man working the rails. John Henry, he would spend his day’s drilling holes ...
Dec 9, 2020 · According to the historian Carlene Hempel , John Henry, the best and fastest of the thousand workers on the C&O Railway, took up two hammers in an attempt to prove the enduring value of the human labor of himself and his fellow steel drivers. In a steel-driving race against the machine, it is said that Henry managed to drill 14 feet into the ...
John Henry. Statue of John Henry, near Talcott, West Virginia. 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.”. Writers and artists see in John Henry a symbol of the worker’s ...
