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Sep 24, 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.’
- John Henry - Kids | Britannica Kids | Homework Help
Along with Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed, John Henry is...
- John Henry - Kids | Britannica Kids | Homework Help
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.
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 to work building the C&O Railroad.
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.
May 9, 2018 · John Henry, a mighty laborer who outperformed a mechanical drill, is a character who first appeared in African American songs and ballads. He can be seen as a symbol of black strength and of African Americans ' refusal to be crushed.
By Carlene Hempel. There are two John Henrys, the actual man and the legend surrounding him. Defining the first is a matter of assembling facts. He was born a slave, worked as a laborer for the railroads after the Civil War, and died in his 30s, leaving behind a young pretty wife and a baby. Pinning down the second, the legend, is not so easy.
Along with Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed, John Henry is one of the most famous American folk heroes. The story of John Henry is usually told through a folk song called a…
