Viewing page 4 of 4

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

FOREWORD 
By the Artist

The song of John Henry, the steel-driving man, I first heard when a boy in my early teens at home in Virginia. At that age whenever I heard the ballad sung by older boys or men at work, it appealed to me chiefly because it told in somber words and tune the life and tragic death of a powerful and popular working man who belonged to my section of the country and to my own race. 

As I grew older, I came to realize the deeper significance of the story and the literary value of the ballad. To the Negroes in our country at the time of the building of the Big Bend Tunnel, their physical strength and ability, and willingness to use it was their chief asset in the struggle for economic survival. Hence, to them, John Henry became a symbol of greatness and so popular a folk hero that during his day and for several generations following many Negro babies in the Southern states were christened for him. 

The epic also, through the personality of John Henry, dramatizes the beginning of the movement of the Negro from agriculture into industrial labor, and the practical use of machinery in place of hand labor in the development of industrial America. 

John Henry was not made up of the whole cloth nor was he the Negro counterpart of the mythical Paul Bunyan, but did live and work in the Big Bend Tunnel in West Virginia. For these facts, which have been most helpful in my painting the story, I am indebted to the book John Henry A Folk Lore Story by Professor Louis W. Chappell of West Virginia University. 

CATALOGUE

1-WHEN JOHN HENRY WAS A BABY
2-HE LAID DOWN HIS HAMMER AND CRIED
3-THE DRESS SHE WORE WAS BLUE
4-JOHN HENRY WAS THE BEST IN THE LAND
5-WHERE'D YOU GIT THEM HIGH-TOP SHOES
6-MY HAMMER IN THE WIND
7-A MAN AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT A MAN
8-JOHN HENRY ON THE RIGHT. STEAM DRILL ON THE LEFT.
9-DIED WID HIS HAMMER IN HIS HAND
10-GOIN' WHERE HER MAN FELL DEAD
11-THERE LIES THAT STEEL-DRIVIN' MAN