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John Henry is an African-American Folk Hero , who has been the subject of numerous songs, stories, plays, and novels. Like other "Big Men" such as and dies. In other versions of the story, a blood vessel pops in John Henry's brain. In one version, he survives. In modern depictions John Henry is often portrayed as hammering down rail spikes, but older versions depict him driving blasting holes into rock, part of the process of excavating railroad tunnels and cuttings. In almost all versions of the story, John Henry is a black man and serves as a folk hero for all American working-class people, representing their marginalization during changes entering the modern age in America. While the character may or may not have been based on a real person, Henry became an important symbol of the working class. His story is usually seen as an archetypal illustration of the futility of fighting the technological progress that was evident in the 19th century upset of traditional physical labor roles. Some Labor Advocates interpret the legend as illustrating that even the most skilled workers of time-honored practices are marginalized when companies are more interested in efficiency and production than in their employee's health and well-being. Although John Henry proved himself more efficient than the steam-drill, he worked himself to death and was replaced by the machine anyway. Thus the legend of John Henry has been a staple of Leftist politics, labor organizing and American Counter-culture for well over one hundred years. HISTORY The truth about John Henry as the strongest man alive is obscured by time and myth, but one legend has it that he was a slave born in Alabama in the 1840s and fought his famous battle with the steam hammer along the Chesapeake And Ohio Railway in Talcott, West Virginia . A statue and memorial plaque have been placed along a highway south of Talcott as it crosses over the tunnel in which the competition may have taken place. The railroad historian Roy C. Long found that there were multiple Big Bend Tunnels along the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Railway. Also, the C&O employed multiple black men who went by the name "John Henry" at the time that those tunnels were being built. Though he could not find any documentary evidence, he believes on the basis of anecdotal evidence that the contest between man and machine did indeed happen at the Talcott, West Virginia site due to the presence of all three (a man named John Henry, a tunnel named Big Bend, and a steam-powered drill) at the same time at that place. |
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