The Tall Tale of John Henry:

Fact, Fiction, or Both??

By: Jonathan Williams, Kaitlyn Beck, Ryan Chidester, Tristan Holt, & Johnny Dearstine




John Henry is one of America's most well-known folk heroes. The stories about him are larger than life, but that doesn't mean he wasn't a real person.

 

 



Many Americans are familiar with the story of John Henry. He was a steel-driving man after the Civil War, working for the C&O railroad company while they were digging a tunnel through the Big Bend Mountain right here in West Virginia. John Henry drove spikes in the rail tracks, and he was faster than anybody who'd ever worked the rails.

 



One day, the workers got some bad news. The rail company had bought a big shiny machine that could drive spikes. The boss said the machine could do the work of 10 men. The workers were afraid they were going to lose their jobs to a machine.



John Henry, the strongest steel-driving man there ever was, stood up and said, "There's no machine faster than me!" He challenged the company to a race with the machine. If he won, then the men got to keep their jobs. If the machine won, the company would buy enough machines to finish the job and all of the workers would be unemployed.



When the big day came, the workers said, "John, you can't win against this machine." But John Henry was certain that he could do it. He said, "I'm a steel-driving man, and I'll die with a hammer in my hand." Over the day, men ran back and forth bringing spikes and holding them for Henry to drive and loading spikes into the machine.

 



When the whistle blew at the end of the contest, John Henry lay on the ground, breathing hard. The judges measured the lines and found that John Henry had laid a little bit more than the machine. Sweating, John Henry breathed out his last breath, knowing that he'd saved his fellow workers. He died with a hammer in his hand.

 



Historians think John Henry was a real person. When the United States was laying the rails, many railroad companies brought ex-slaves all over the country so they would have work after the Civil War was over. The working conditions were bad and many African-Americans were treated just as badly as they were when they were slaves.


Many people in this time were afraid that machines were going to take their jobs. People were building more and more factories, and the more people invented, the fewer people it took to get work done. Hearing a story about a man who could work harder than a machine made people feel better about themselves and the work they did.

 

 



The real John Henry probably died in a tunnel collapse, historians say. However, the story of John Henry is much bigger than a single person. The story of John Henry tells a story bigger than history, and it's a story that tells us about the everyday concerns of the people who told it.