The Birth of John Henry

By Melvin B. Tolson

The night John Henry is born an ax   

            of lightning splits the sky,   

and a hammer of thunder pounds the earth,   

      and the eagles and panthers cry!

      John Henry—he says to his Ma and Pa:

            “Get a gallon of barleycorn.   

      I want to start right, like a he-man child,

            the night that I am born!”

Says:   “I want some ham hocks, ribs, and jowls,   

            a pot of cabbage and greens;   

      some hoecackes, jam, and buttermilk,   

            a platter of pork and beans!”

      John Henry’s Ma—she wrings her hands,   

            and his Pa—he scratches his head.   

      John Henry—he curses in giraffe-tall words,   

            flops over, and kicks down the bed.   

      He’s burning mad, like a bear on fire—

            so he tears to the riverside.   

As he stoops to drink, Old Man River gets scared

            and runs upstream to hide!

    Some say he was born in Georgia—O Lord!

            Some say in Alabam.   

But it’s writ on the rock at the Big Bend Tunnel:   

            “Lousyana was my home.   So scram!”  

John Henry was one of the heroes of the working men and the railroad workers. As described in the poem, he was a super-being; stronger than the natural man. His appetite was prodigious, but even larger was his appetite for work; he would work constantly for days on end.  Even at birth he was more than human, said to have been born on a night when lightning split the sky and great thunderclouds took the shape of hammers. Born big, mean, and strong as ten men, he was walking in an hour and killing cows with a hammer in a week. The story goes that John Henry was born a slave, but won his freedom during the war between the states.
Most of John Henry's stories are told in the forms of songs, work songs sung on the job to keep the mind off work and the pain of tired muscles easier to ignore. These songs started among the people who worked the rails, who dug the coal and blasted the tunnels through the mountains.