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Ezra Jack Keats's John Henry: An American Legend, published in 1965, is a notable picture book chronicling the history of John Henry and portraying him as the "personification of the medieval Everyman who struggles against insurmountable odds and wins." Colson Whitehead's 2001 novel John Henry Days uses the John Henry myth as story background ...
- 1840s or 1850s
- American folk hero
The legend, as told through ballads and work songs, has kept the story of John Henry and the black railroad workers alive. In February of 1870, workers began drilling the Great Bend Tunnel where the Greenbrier River makes a seven-mile meander around Big Bend Mountain.
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
Dec 9, 2020 · As a Black American folk hero, John Henry became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement, and even today his story's universal themes resonate, as the automation of work and the ubiquity of technology raise questions about the value of human labor and what is inevitably lost with the march of technological progress.
Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend. Time Period. 1877 to 1924. Media Type. Video. Topics. Black History. Presenter. Scott Reynolds Nelson. According to the ballad that made him famous, John Henry did battle with a steam-powered drill, beat the machine, and died.
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.
Jun 21, 2022 · The Story. It is told that John Henry, a former slave, worked for the C&O railroad driving steel, a job required when blasting rock. Between 1868 and 1870, the C&O railroad was building rail lines in southern WV when it had to tunnel through Big Bend Mountain near Talcott.