Biography:
         Julius Lester’s father was a Methodist preacher, and he grew up in various communities around the Midwest and South (he was born in St. Louis, lived in Kansas and Tennessee, and spent summers at his grandmother’s farm in Arkansas).  Although his father was a preacher, Lester converted to Judaism as an adult (in 1982).
        His childhood dream was to be a musician, not an author – he states that he was a poor writer as a child. He attended Fisk University in Nashville, graduating in 1960 with a degree in English.  Since 1971, he has taught at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he is a popular professor, receiving a state-wide teaching award in 1986.
        In addition to writing for children, he has published numerous essays and literary scholarship, has recorded two albums of his own original songs, and has mounted exhibitions of his own photography.  Much of his photography relates to the Civil Rights movement, in which he was active.  (He was head of the photography department of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in the mid-60s.)   Along with folksinger Pete Seeger, he wrote The 12-String Guitar as Played by Leadbelly (1967) (on-line bio).  In the ‘60s, he also hosted a radio show in NYC.
        Jerry Pinkney grew up in Philadelphia, the middle of six children of a carpenter and a housewife.  His early interest in art was supported by his parents.  He studied commercial art at a vocational school and subsequently received a scholarship to the Philadelphia Museum School of Art.  He worked as an illustrator of greeting cards until he established himself enough to set up his own independent studio.
        He has been illustrating children’s books since 1965; among his many awards are three Caldecott Honor medals, for books by three different authors: Julius Lester (John Henry, 1995), Patricia McKissack (Mirandy and Brother Wind, 1989), and Robert D. San Souci (The Talking Eggs, 1990).  His artwork has also been displayed in several gallery and museum shows, and he has curated exhibits of work by other African-American artists.  Pinkney told the Detroit News: "I've always made an effort to present African-American culture with dignity and to combat stereotypes of the past.” (2 Sept 1995)
        In the 1970s, Pinkney was working on a calendar featuring black cowboys when he and Lester decided to collaborate on a book on the subject (Black Cowboy, Wild Horses).  They have subsequently produced three books together: Uncle Remus, John Henry, and most recently Sam and the Tigers.  He described the Uncle Remus tales and John Henry as illustrations of contrasting types of African-American folk heroes: Brer Rabbit, the trickster, as a model for successful resistance from slavery days, and “later. . . John Henry, a free man, whose strength and valor bring him fame. He was a strong folk hero for African Americans, a symbol of all the working men who made a major contribution to the building of the roads and railroads in the mountains of West Virginia -- a dangerous job for which many paid with their lives.” (Penguin Putnam)

The Story:
        Leeming and Page call John Henry “the legendary expression of the black man’s strength in the new Industrial Age” and “the black Herakles.”  They say that his story is probably based on an actual event, the construction of the Big Bend Tunnel of the C&O railroad in 1870s West Virginia (181).  Lester says that a former slave named John Henry probably was part of the crew building the tunnel, but questions the truth of the contest between a man and a steam drill (JH).
        In a 1983 study, Brett Williams made as strong a case as possible for the historical existence of John Henry, while acknowledging that definitive proof of the central events of the song is unlikely.  If he existed, John Henry would have been born in slavery; in the mid-19th century, “John and Henry were the two most common names” for male slaves (Williams 47).  “However, the very ordinariness of John Henry’s name makes him not only impossible to trace but perhaps suspect as well.”  His generic name may make him “a sort of Everyman” (Williams 48).
        The chief contractor for the Big Bend tunnel was a Captain W.R. Johnson, who employed about 1,000 men, mostly blacks, in building the tunnel in Summer County, WV,between 1870 and 1872 (Williams 50).  The area was then fairly remote, so there would have been little likelihood of historical reportage of the contest, if it occurred.
        The Big Bend tunnel was the longest of its time, and its construction was very dangerous, possibly costing hundreds of lives.  Workers became sick with silicosis, or were injured in explosions or rock falls as the blasting consumed 833 pounds of nitroglycerin daily (Williams 50).  The work was slow and labor-intensive: “six steel drivers working twelve-hour shifts needed a full day to bore the holes for just one blast, which advanced the heading only ten feet” (Williams 52).  Drivers worked with shakers, men who held the drill bits for them to hammer, and created songs to help establish a rhythm for the work, which both sped the work and made it marginally safer for the shakers.  The story of John Henry was likely incorporated into one of these songs (Williams 52).
        Because of the time and number of workers required, it seems likely that Captain Johnson would have at least tried a steam drill, of which there were several models then in use.  Engineers on the project did not recall the use of such drills when interviewed 50 years later, but Williams speculates that a salesman might have offered a trial of the drill, leading to the test against one of the best steel drivers, John Henry (Williams 55).  The nature of the rock at Big Bend probably meant that the steel drill demonstration would not have justified continued use.  He notes that the placement of the competition and the nature of steam drill’s failure (“Your hole’s done choke and your drill’s done broke”) as recorded in the song are consistent with such a scenario (Williams 56).

The Book:
         Pinkney was already researching the John Henry story, planning to illustrate it, when Lester was contacted by editor Phyllis Fogelman to write the text.
         We should note in particular Lester’s language, which reflects an oral form of storytelling.  It makes use of repetitions (“RINGGGGG,” the rainbow wrapped around his shoulders, etc.) and includes testimony to the alleged reliability of the witness, as in the case of the competition with Ferret-Faced Freddy.  The text also relies for some of its humorous effect on the use of odd similes in which physical phenomena are compared to abstract ideas – e.g., “The boulder shivered like the morning when freedom came to the slaves” – and on personifications of the sun and moon.
         The illustrations frequently return to the evocation of the natural world from the beginning of the text – the animals that visit at John Henry’s birth (an element that suggests myths of the hero’s birth) are silently present to witness many of the subsequent events (when he cuts down an acre of trees, when he arrives at the boulder blocking the road builders, at the wordless spread when the contest begins, when the train passes by carrying his body).  The concluding burial at the White House aligns John Henry with general American history and legend, not just that of the African American community (note here Johnny Cash’s recording of the song).
         On the spread announcing John Henry’s birth, Pinkney includes two illustrations – one consistent with the text (the animals gathering as witnesses) and the baby lifting his cradle, a detail left out of the text but included in some of the folk songs about John Henry.  Note that elsewhere, Pinkney typically selects one of the more dramatic incidents from that page's text for illustration, but is not afraid to have illustrations without John Henry in them at all – e.g., in the spread where the rainbow appears around the hero, John Henry is obscured by the dust his work has raised, and we are placed in the position of the onlookers (compare to Peter Rabbit, where the hero is almost always placed in a position of prominence).  Other examples: John Henry is at the side, not the focus of the picture, when Freddy finishes the race; he is absent from the picture in which the steam drill is introduced; he is a tiny figure in the landscape of the wordless spread.
        The notes to the book say that Lester does not recall where he heard the stanza about John Henry being buried at the White House, but that was in Lead Belly’s version of the song – which seems a likely source, given that Lester also wrote a book about Lead Belly’s guitar playing.  Burial in Washington was also included in Botkin’s Treasury of American Folklore, which Lester cites as a source.

Sources:  Leeming, David, and Jake Page, Myths, Legends, & Folktales of America: An Anthology; Lester, Julius, John Henry; Staggers, Gail, “Black Onyx: Black Folktales,” Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute; Williams, Brett, “John Henry (American): Hero of Strength,” in Hero Myths: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), edited by Robert A. Segal.

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