Suchergebnisse
Suchergebnisse:
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.
13. Mai 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 did the machine but died “with his hammer in his hand.”.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
9. Dez. 2020 · John Henry was a railroad man, / He worked from six 'till five, / "Raise 'em up bullies and let 'em drop down, / I'll beat you to the bottom or die." Johnson believed that this set of lyrics, arranged in 1900, represents the song as it was sung in work camps and on chain gangs as early as the 1870s.
John Henry by Traditional song meaning, lyric interpretation, video and chart position
24. Apr. 2024 · “John Henry” has become one of the most iconic songs in American folk music, and it has been recorded by countless artists over the years. The song’s enduring popularity can be attributed to its simple yet powerful message. John Henry is a symbol of hard work, perseverance, and the indomitable spirit of the common people.
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.
John Henry was a former slave who worked on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad in the years following the Civil War. He was one of a thousand or so men who spent nearly three years drilling a hole through Big Bend Mountain in Talcott, West Virginia.
