John Henry: then and now.

The legend of John Henry has a rich and varied background. More than a century old, it has withstood the test of time as a popular American legend with near-universal appeal. For the last thirty years, however, the John Henry story has been dominated by one picture book retelling, Ezra Jack Keats's John Henry: An American Legend (1965). Although there have been various picture book retellings within the last three decades (Stein, 1969; Blassinggame, 1971; Nader, 1980; Sanfield, 1991; and Jensen, 1993), Keats's version still remains one of the most captivating, rendered with his signature collage style reflecting his love of marbled papers, bold patterns, and brilliant colors.

Keats's retelling has outlasted its competitors, however, not because of the artist's captivating illustrative style, but because of Keats's message. For Keats, John Henry is the personification of the medieval Everyman who struggles against insurmountable odds and wins. With the release of Julius Lester's (1994) and Terry Small's (1994) retellings, however, we are forced to reevaluate the legacy of Keats's contribution, because Lester and Small accomplish what Keats is unable to - they position themselves firmly within the black community, dealing more honestly and squarely with John Henry's African American heritage.

All three writers narrate a chronology of events in the life of John Henry, starting with his birth. For Keats and Lester, there is a miraculous quality to John Henry's birth, what Brett Williams calls a "magico-spiritual Moses-like event" (86). John Henry is unnaturally strong, strong enough, in fact, at birth to wave a hammer (Keats) or hold his cradle high over his head (Lester). Lester further amplifies the magical quality of John Henry's birth by giving his origins a more mythic quality: Lester introduces a unicom at the special event. In Small's retelling, John Henry's birth is ordinary, but not uncomplicated: He is born a slave. Although he soon grows big and strong, his physical prowess is not that of Superman. He is large, yes; strong, of course; but he does not possess the superhuman qualities characteristic of Keats's and Lester's folk hero.

Whereas Small deals quickly with John Henry's early life, Keats and Lester chronicle several episodes in his adolescent life before John Henry leaves his hometown to seek work on a road crew. In Keats's story, after helping around the house, and then working as a fieldhand on a nearby farm, John Henry finds work on a riverboat. In Lester's version, John Henry also works around the house, then has a brief episode with the town bully before setting off into the world. These early episodes reinforce both John Henry's physical prowess and his personal stature as a kind, good-natured person. Small on the other hand, omits these demonstrations of character, seeing them as overly sentimental and unnecessary to the political message to which he is committed. Small moves swiftly to John Henry's adult life and his encounter with Josiah Haley, owner of the newly developed steam drill.

It is at this point in the narration that the sequence of events in all three stories is most similar. First, there is a preliminary event which involves an episode with John Henry and his crew; then John Henry's race against the steam drill is highlighted. As before, Keats and Lester are more similar in their narration than Small. In a further demonstration of character, Keats and Lester place John Henry in the hero's role: Keats's John Henry saves his crew's life by preventing an untimely explosion; Lester's John Henry saves his crew's dignity by single-handedly paving a new road. Small's preliminary event takes quite a different turn: When Josiah Haley appears in camp with his new-fangled invention, John Henry and his crew lose their jobs. This humiliation intensifies the animosity already felt between Josiah Haley and John Henry. Thus, whereas Keats's and Lester's preliminary event portends a greater physical challenge, Small's preliminary event signals a greater psychological battle, a battle of wills.

Ultimately, however, in all three stories, John Henry races the steam drill. Although the details vary in each story, the outcome is the same: John Henry beats the steam drill, emerges into the light of day, and then falls dead from sheer exhaustion. Both Keats and Small end their stories at this point, though with different emotional effects - and political overtones - given the different perspectives taken. Lester, on the other hand, adds an epilogue: After John Henry's death, his coffin is loaded on a train and taken to Washington, D.C., where it is "buried on the White House lawn" late one evening.

The differences in narrative structure outlined above are complemented by differences in each author's storytelling style. Small is perhaps the closest to the original presentation in his use of the folk ballad. Small's style is pithy and terse; it is the language of the common working man filled with frequent expressions of rural black dialect, as the following two stanzas indicate:

Then John git to pumpin like a natural man With his arms all shinin black, And his legs start swayin to the ching-a-ling-ding With the steam risin off his back.

"Water boy, come here!" John Henry call. "Git your feets like a rollin wheel! Bring a bucket for to cool my body down, Bring another for to cool my steel!" (15)

Small tells his story directly, without metaphors, vivid descriptive language, or lengthy asides. He often treats his images coarsely, while at the same time showing an occasional softer side, as when he describes a pastoral setting as the "pine-clad virgin hills." All in all, Small remains intent on the political content of his tale, minimizing any sentimental attitudes or romantic imagery that might distract his audience. The end result is a voice that is earthy, even crude, but always truthful and to the point.

Lester, on the other hand, although basing his story on several ballad sources, exhibits a much more colorful and loose storytelling style. His diction is folksy, filled with regional idioms, colorful expressions, and natural imagery. Take for example, Lester's description of John Henry as he begins to race the steam drill:

On the other side was John Henry. Next to the mountain he didn't look much bigger than a wish that wasn't going to come true.

He had a twenty-pound hammer in each hand and muscles hard as wisdom in each arm. As he swung them through the air, they shone like silver, and when the hammers hit the rock, they rang like gold. Before long, tongues of fire leaped out with each blow. (22)

Lester also animates his story with anthropomorphic images. When the sun rises, it doesn't just pop over the hills. Lester takes his time, plays with the image, embellishes the act: "The sun yawned, washed its face, flossed and brushed its teeth, and hurried up over the horizon." Similarly, on the morning that John Henry is to race the steam drill, Lester breathes life into the act: "The birds weren't singing and the roosters weren't crowing. When the sun didn't hear the rooster, he wondered if something was wrong. So he rose a couple of minutes early to see."

Along with these animated images, Lester infuses his story with contemporary references. When John Henry repairs his parents' porch, he adds, at the same time, "a wing onto the house with an indoor swimming pool and one of them jacutzis." And, when he strikes a boulder with his twenty-pound hammer, the boulder shivers "like you do on a cold winter morning when it looks like the school bus is never going to come."

Lester's storytelling style is, in short, full-bodied and electric; filled with colorful expressions, figurative language, and hyperbole; awash in sensuous rhythms. Lester breathes life into John Henry, ensuring his place in the pantheon of American tall-tale heroes. When illustrator Jerry Pinkney depicts John Henry standing a full head and shoulders above the rest of the men, it is because Lester has made him larger than life from the very first page.

Keats's voice, on the other hand, is quite different from Small's balladry and Lester's raconteuring. Using sparse prose poetry, Keats moves quickly through his story, often only alluding to details. It is not until well into the book, at the point where John Henry races the steam drill, that Keats's voice begins to gather momentum, rather like a locomotive whose force and sound intensify as it draws near. The height of Keats's narrative comes at the point where John Henry, sensing victory is close at hand, grabs two twenty-pound hammers:

"Hand me that twenty-pound hammer, L'il Bill!" Harder and faster crashed the hammer. Great chunks of rock fell as John Henry ripped hole after hole into the tunnel wall. The machine rattled and whistled and drilled even faster. Friends doused John Henry and L'il Bill with cold water to keep them going.

Then John Henry took a deep breath, picked up two sledge hammers, and sang: "Ain't no hammers Strike like fire, Strike like lightning, Lawd, And I won't tire!" "Hammers like this, Lawd, There's never been! I'll keep swingin' 'em, Lawd, Until we win!" (21, 24)

Nature also plays a significant, but different role in each story. For Keats, nature is an element to be conquered. This attitude is consistent from the initial pages of the book, where nature stops to pay homage to the infant John Henry, to the foreman's soliloquy on dynamiting and tunnel-making, and finally to John Henry's climatic hammering through the mountainside. Set in the arid West, rather than the lush mountains of West Virginia, Keats's landscapes tend to give way to the centrality of his characters; they literally flatten out. Nature is clearly - both visually and textually - subservient to man.

Lester, on the other hand, is more complex in his use of natural imagery. Granted nature stops to pay homage to John Henry upon his birth, and John Henry shows a commanding ability over nature at every turn, yet nature is both servant and friend, as is effectively demonstrated by the animals that come to visit him at his birth, in the sun and moon that continually peer over the mountain at him, and in the rainbow that wraps around his shoulders "like love." John Henry is, however, befriended by nature not because he dominates it, but because he understands it. John Henry is more a caretaker or steward - a black Johnny Appleseed, if you will - than an invading conqueror.

Small uses the image of nature in a very different way. When John Henry hears for the third time of the arrival of Josiah Haley and his steam drill, he makes a firm decision to stay and fight. Facing the "red shale hills" of West Virginia, calling them a part of "this soul of mine," John Henry exclaims:

"A man can leave for the city, they say, He can leave for to ramble and roam. But wherever he go, a bit of these hills Stay wit him, callin him home. "Long as he move, he gon be pushed, Till they ain't no place to go - Time come when a man gotta make a stand And he ain't gon move no mo'. "I'm home, L'il Bill, and I'm home for good; It's a feelin in my bones and skin. They ain't no man, ain't no machine Ever make me leave agin." (9)

John Henry's appeal to his homeland is much more than a sentimental appeal to nature; a free, self-determined man, John Henry is exercising his political will. Nature, for Small, represents the embodiment of all that it means to be free - to have a home, a piece of land, place to work. But John Henry is not fighting for home or land or work, but for his very soul.

Whereas nature forms one of the central images of the John Henry story, man and machine combine to form one of its most explicit motifs, and again each author handles this motif differently. In a departure from tradition, Keats sets the legend in the Western frontier wilderness, and alludes to "Indian lands" and "stampeding buffalo herds." He does so in order to lament the eclipse of the "rugged individual" by the monotonous but forward-moving drone of modern technology. John Henry's death symbolizes for Keats the waning of the prized American ideal of individualism. It is in this respect that Keat's John Henry gains widespread appeal, but at the price of ignoring the underlying racial tension inherent in the conflict between John Henry, an ex-slave, and white railroad bosses notorious for their exploitation of black laborers.

Brett Williams points out some of the gruesome facts indicative of the early days of industrial expansion, especially related to railroad tunneling. Workers - many of them ex-slaves - died from a variety of afflictions (tunnel sickness, cave-ins, explosions, accidents, mistreatment, etc.). Their bodies were simply tossed in a rock fill near the tunnel's entrance, their deaths seldom reported. There was, in general, "a seemingly unfathomable lack of concern for working conditions" (7).

For Lester and Small, racial identity is significant. This is demonstrated primarily by their prominent representation of the owner of the steam drill, a white industrial boss, rather than the steam drill itself. Small, more straightforward about the underlying political realities than Lester, puts the conflict between John Henry and his white counterpart, steam drill owner Josiah Haley, front and center. When both men first face off against each other outside John Henry's cabin, they stand defiant, feet apart, arms akimbo - both equally determined to beat the other. Their animosity is further underscored when Josiah Haley bets the crew boss, Cap'n Tommy, that his machine will outdrive John Henry: "There ain't no uppity, loudmouth boy / Beat the Haley Steam Drill yet." Calling John Henry an "uppity, loudmouth boy" is an obvious racial slur, and it places in clear relief the political content of Small's retelling.

For Small, the legend of John Henry has more in common with John Brown than it does with Paul Bunyan, or Pecos Bill, or any other tall-tale figure, as Keats, and to some extent Lester, might have us believe. In this respect, Small's interpretation is closer to the original spirit of the "protest songs" (Williams 110) that rail drivers sang to lament their dreadful situation.

A second motif that runs throughout all three stories involves the quest for justice, equality, and freedom. Keats, a pan-culturalist, presents a melting pot of working-class people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Writing at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Keats is particularly sensitive to issues of equality, but his utopian view is still clearly Anglo-centric. Although one of the first to cast people of color in central roles in his stories, and certainly ahead of his time in this respect, Keats fails to deal with the political realities people of color encounter growing up in white America.

Lester and Small, on the other hand, position themselves firmly within the black community. Lester, whose political temperament also reflects the influence of the Civil Rights Movement, understands implicitly the black experience in America, and the inalienable constitutional rights afforded - but never fully realized by - that community. The transcendent quality Lester seeks - and ultimately achieves - is a product of the hope he continues to hold out for an America free from racial inequality. Infusing his story with the imagery of nature, the Bible, and American liberal politics, Lester consciously sees in John Henry the hopes and dreams of another prominent African American hero - the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Comparing the two personalities, Lester writes in the foreword to the book: "I'm not certain what the connection is between John Henry and King. However, I suspect it is the connection all of us feel to both figures - namely, to have the courage to hammer until our hearts break and to leave our mourners smiling in their tears."

Small, on the other hand, sees little justice in the American system. It is a system intolerably controlled by white America, unjustly rigged to hold down its downtrodden and poor. Small makes it crystal clear that John Henry's fight is against the white man. When John Henry finally squares off against the indomitable Josiah Haley, the speech he delivers is not about the "red shale hills" of West Virginia, but about the very nature of man's soul:

"Do that machine got a broad ole back, Big heart, and a callused hand? Do it move to the rhythm of the ringin steel And grunt when the hammer land?

"Do it ache and sweat in the blisterin sun, Do it choke on the dust of stone? Do that machine got a song to sing And a soul to call its own?" (15)

This is the crux of Small's message. It is the struggle to save man's soul - the black man's soul - in the face of three centuries of white oppression. Josiah Haley's steam-driven, hard-rock drill is only one more manifestation of this oppression. When John Henry dies after beating Haley's drill, however, he doesn't die a hero, but he dies, as Williams has suggested, a martyr, another victim of the white man's subjugation.

Like Lester, Small appeals to a greater authority, but it is not to the American Constitution; it is to God Almighty Himself:

"Gon get me a crown," John Henry say, "But it ain't gon be down here. God must be needin some steel drivin done - He callin right in my ear.

"Come lay my hammer by my side: I sho' nuff take it along. Ole Titus, he jes a-waitin up yonder, Singin him a shaker song." (25)

This appeal to God is significant in distinguishing Lester's more liberal politics (with his continued trust in the basic tenets of justice, equality, and freedom embedded in the Constitution) from Small's more pragmatic but bleak political outlook. However, on a more practical level, Small's appeal to God reflects a basic belief held in the black community: "Through religion, slaves looked to Old Testament precedents which promised confrontation and deliverance in this world, not the next. The heroes celebrated in spirituals were men who took on a more powerful but overbearing authority and defeated it, thus liberating a people chosen by God as special" (Williams 116).

The legend of John Henry has been with us for a long time. As a picture book, we have known it substantially through the retelling provided by Ezra Jack Keats. Published at the height of Keats's artistic powers, it has stood the test of time - some thirty years! It is time, however, especially with Lester's and Small's retellings, that we reconsider its staying power. Did Keats portray an immortal John Henry, a truly transcendent legendary figure? Or, is it that for the last thirty years we have not had the courage or desire or wisdom to tell the story from a more Afro-centric perspective? I'm afraid the latter is true.

But we can hope, along with John Henry, that American culture is changing; its doors are opening; its riches and spoils are becoming more accessible to all of us, notwithstanding our ethnic or racial backgrounds. Lester's and Small's retellings encourage us; they represent truer pictures not only of John Henry but of America as well. To this end, both retellings add significantly to the John Henry legend and substantially to the body of children's folk literature.

Works Cited

Blassinggame, Wyatt. John Henry and Paul Bunyan Play Baseball. Champaign: Garrard, 1971.

Jensen, Patricia. John Henry and His Mighty Hammer. Mahwah: Troll, 1993.

Keats, Ezra Jack. John Henry: An American Legend. New York: Pantheon, 1965.

Lester, Julius. John Henry. New York: Dial, 1994.

Nader, C. J. John Henry, The Steel-Driving Man. Mahwah: Troll, 1980.

Sanfield, Steve. A Natural Man: The True Story of John Henry. Boston: Godine, 1991.

Small, Terry. The Legend of John Henry. New York: Doubleday, 1994.

Stein, R. Conrad. Steel Driving Man: The Legend of John Henry. Chicago: Children's P, 1969.

Williams, Brett. John Henry: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport: Greenwood P, 1983.

W. Nikola-Lisa is Associate Professor of Education at National-Louis University in Evanston, Illinois, and the author of numerous books for children. His most recent book is Shake Dem Halloween Bones (1997), published by Houghton Mifflin.