John Henry: The Rebel Versions

A look at resistance, protest and rebellion in the ballad and legend of John Henry

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John Henry: The Rebel Versions

by Jim Hauser Contact: jphauser2000 (at) yahoo (dot) com

This website originated in May 2013

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This website documents my 10+ years of research on the ballad “John Henry,” an African American folk song. The ballad tells the story of a black, railroad tunnel-building steel driver named John Henry, who raced against a mechanical steam drill to determine which of the two could drive steel spikes into solid rock faster. According to legend, John Henry won the race, but the strain of the great effort he put forth during the contest killed him. It is believed that the legend is based on an actual event which took place during the late nineteenth century, some time after the end of the Civil War.

My research focuses primarily on John Henry's significance to African Americans. Therefore, I have been doing this research by looking at the ballad in the context of the African American experience during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras, periods of time during which the legend originated and the ballad flourished and reached the height of its popularity among African Americans.

The discussion below summarizes some of the most important things I've learned about the ballad through my research. Much more detailed discussions of my work appear on other pages of this website. This is an ongoing project, and I will update this website periodically as I learn more about the ballad.

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These songs didn't come out of thin air... If you sang "John Henry" as many times as me-- John Henry was a steel-driving man / Died with a hammer in his hand / John Henry said "a man ain't nothin' but a man / Before I let that steam drill drive me down / I'll die with that hammer in my hand." If you had sung that song as many times as I did, you'd have written "How many roads must a man walk down?" too.

--Bob Dylan (from his MusiCares Person of the Year speech, February 2015)

Was John Henry a race rebel? What I mean by this question is Did African Americans view John Henry as a revolutionary figure, a symbol of racial resistance, protest, and rebellion? I believe that for at least some African Americans--and possibly many-- the answer to the question is "Yes." And that is because John Henry clearly occupies a heroic role as a race rebel in the lyrics of a substantial number of documented versions of the ballad sung by or collected from African Americans.

Examples of those lyrics are below, and additional examples are identified on other pages of this website.

John Henry said to the walking boss
I'm nothin' but a man,
And before I take any abuse from you,
I'll die with this hammer in my hand,
I'll die with this hammer in my hand.
---version by Minerva Williams

John Henry told his captain
“A man ain’t nothin’ but a man,
Befo’ I work from sun to sun
I’d die wid de hammer in my han’.”
--- version in Howard W. Odum and Guy B. Johnson's book Negro
Workaday Songs

John Henry told-a the Captain,
He said, “A man ain’t but a man,
And before I’ll stand to let you drive me down,
I will die with the hammer in my hand, Lord, Lord,
I will die with the hammer in my hand.
---version in Bruce Jackson's book Wake Up Dead Man: Hard Labor and Southern Blues

In the above verses, and in verses found on other pages of this website – almost all of which are from black performers or informants-- John Henry does something quite extraordinary: he challenges his captain by refusing to be physically beaten, mistreated, or overworked. In doing so, he steps over the boundaries established by white society for black men in the days of Reconstruction and Jim Crow. In those days, acts of resistance such as the ones by John Henry against his captain – by a black man against a white authority figure – amounted to acts of racial defiance and rebellion against the white system of power.

In other words, these acts of resistance cast John Henry in the role of a race rebel. Also, these acts show that some--or possibly many--African Americans looked beneath the surface of a story about a powerful black man opposing a steam drill and saw a hidden message of racial opposition. Perhaps many of them even saw John Henry’s battle against the drill as a symbol of the black struggle for freedom.

Through my 10 years of research, I have come to believe that many African Americans did indeed view John Henry as a symbol of black freedom. And I believe he was a symbol of black freedom because he was such a powerful symbol of black manhood at a time when black men were denied their manhood by the white majority--and when black men (and black women) were denied their humanity and freedom.

Two black writers, Sterling Brown and Sterling Stuckey, have pointed to John Henry as a great symbol of black manhood. Stuckey, in an essay titled "Through the Prism of Folklore," wrote that John Henry is the black man’s “greatest symbol of manhood.” And, in a poem entitled “Strange Legacies,” Brown paid tribute to John Henry and his manhood by describing his courage, strength, persistence, and pride, and praising him for showing African Americans how to “go down like a man.”

John Henry, with your hammer;

John Henry, with your steel driver’s pride,

You taught us that a man could go down like a man.

Sticking to your hammer till you died.

Brother,

When, beneath the burning sun

The sweat poured down and the breath came thick,

And the loaded hammer swung like a ton.

And the heart grew sick;

You had what we need now, John Henry.

Help us get it.

The connection between John Henry and black freedom is highlighted in the following verses which were collected through the field research of an African American professor and musicologist named Willis Laurence James. They appear in his book Stars in de Elements: A Study of Negro Folk Music.

John Henry was a man didn't 'bey no law

Didn't need no gun, could whip an' man he cross.

De white man say, John Henry, do lak yo' please

Done hear 'bout yo', all de way f 'om Tennessee.

The two verses above highlight the racial aspect of the John Henry legend, and through them we can see why John Henry was such a particularly important hero to African Americans. Standing alone, these lyrics suggest that John Henry was a violent outlaw, a bad man with a reputation so fierce that white men feared him to such a degree that they did not hold him accountable for breaking the law. But to truly understand the meaning that these lyrics held for African Americans, I believe it is necessary to put them in the context of both the John Henry legend and black life in the Jim Crow south. If we do this, a different interpretation of the lyrics emerges, one in which John Henry was not a bad man, but instead a ba-a-ad man. I use the term "ba-a-ad" to signify that many African Americans viewed John Henry as great and powerful, not lawless and evil. More specifically, they saw him as a heroic black man who was respected--and feared--by white men, and who therefore was not bound by the white man's system of laws, a system which was often used as a tool to oppress black people and which even included laws that legalized racial segregation. Also, according to these lyrics, John Henry was told by white men that he could do as he pleased, and this suggests that he did not have to abide by the degrading Jim Crow social customs established by the white majority for African Americans, customs such as acting in a subservient manner towards white people.

The two verses above make it clear that John Henry was living, to paraphrase Greil Marcus in his writing about Stagolee, the black man's fantasy of no limits. He was not just a "steel-drivin' man," but something much more, something that every black man wanted to be: a free man, a black man with dignity who could and did fearlessly cross over the humiliating and demeaning social and legal boundaries established for black people by the white majority. It may very well be that the two verses above provide us with the most enlightening view of John Henry's special heroic status in the hearts and minds of African Americans during the Jim Crow era.

Another way we can understand the significance of John Henry for African Americans is through the appearance of the phrase “a man ain’t nothin’ but a man” in one of the key and most frequently appearing verses of the ballad.

John Henry said to the captain
A man ain’t nothin’ but a man.
Before I let your steam drill beat me down
I’ll die with a hammer in my hand.

On the surface, the “a man ain’t nothin’ but a man” phrase is John Henry’s way of saying, “I am only human, just flesh and blood, not a tireless, unfeeling machine like my opponent, the steam drill,” but beneath the surface he is also saying, “I am a man. And a man – whether he be black or white – is a man.” In other words, the phrase has a double meaning and carries an unspoken message through which John Henry asserts racial equality.

I know the phrase “a man ain’t nothin’ but a man” is an assertion of racial equality because through my research I have found six instances in which African Americans have used this phrase, or variations to it such as “a man ain’t but a man,” to make that assertion. For example, bluesman John Lee Hooker used the phrase “a man is just a man” to declare racial equality in his 1963 recording “Birmingham Blues,” a song which he wrote in response to events which occurred in Birmingham, Alabama during the series of civil rights protest demonstrations which took place there in the spring of 1963. The third and fourth verses of the song are below.

I feel so bad, I read about Birmingham
I feel so bad, I read, read about Birmingham
Ah, do I know one thing: A man is just a man

God made this land
And this land
Is no one, is no one’s land
And God made everybody equal
Equal, equal
I don’t know why Birmingham
Treat, treat the people the way they do

We can also see the phrase “a man ain’t nothin’ but a man” as an assertion of racial equality by looking at another song which appears in Willis's Stars in de Elements, a black folk song titled “De Black Jack and de Tall White Pine.” In this song, a conversation takes place between two trees, a black jack and a white pine. The white pine thinks it is superior to the black jack, but the black jack proclaims its equality by telling the pine, “Trees ain’t nothin’ but trees.” The key verse from the song is below, exactly as it appears in James’s book, including the parenthetical definition (explanation) of the term “biggity.”

De black jack said to de tall white pine,
Just ‘cause you high in de breeze,
You need’nt talk so biggity (bigoted),
Trees ain’t nothin’ but trees.

What I've discussed above is just a small part of the many things I've learned through my research into John Henry's role as a race rebel. Further details about my work are contained in the pages of this website which are identified as Parts 1 through 5. Links to those pages are below.

Part 1: The Rebel and Complaint versions of "John Henry"

Part 2: John Henry, manhood, and racial equality / Coded resistance in the ballad

Part 3: Black resistance in two common verses of "John Henry"

Part 4: Resistance in versions in which John Henry is not a race rebel

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