John Henry

As a child I grew up with the story of John Henry.  He was a hero, a black man so strong that he was able to combat the innovations of whites through the pure power of his physicality and work ethic, and it was something that I admired.  My childish mentality envisioned my grandfather as a kind of John Henry; a black man that fought to develop a business in a racist, hostile environment, and did so with a laugh and a grin.  My grandfather was adept at identifying the “tricks” that southern whites would try to play, and he found ways to circumvent these tricks with impeccable, unmatchable work effort and skill.  Thus, I admired John Henry and looked at him as a hero.  Plus, John Henry was an acceptable hero in the environment of my early formative years.  I was born in Oklahoma where Malcolm X was viewed as a militant, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was revered for his non-violence, Booker T. Washington was touted for his suggestion that blacks should turn to trades and leave the corporate world to white men, George Washington Carver was respected for his capacity to improve processes and create inventions, and Marcus Garvey was not spoken of, as the idea that we would return to Africa and :live in huts” was ridiculous.  Thus we believed in the strength of John Henry and his capacity to prove that the black man was superior to any machine and thus could never be replaced.

As an adult I recognize the limits of my perspective of the John Henry story.  After moving to Cleveland I gradually became more aware of the teachings of Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey, as well as the mechanisms of the structures of systemic oppression, and I became incensed.  I learned how the “racism of the past” was not eliminated, but simply transformed, and how the nation still sustains itself on unpaid and underpaid labor; and also how the work place limits the actions and development of workers in order to continue siphoning resources and profiting from the labors of others in an unbalanced manner.  While we are no longer “slaves” we are definitely still fed upon.  Now I think of the story of John Henry and I have a completely different perspective.  I view John Henry as the story of a beautiful, strong black man who was deceived into insecurity through racism and capitalism, and he cast his talents and very life before swine in an attempt to prove his value and gain security.  Instead of viewing the story of John Henry as the story of a triumphant hero, I now view the story as a tragedy visited upon blackness that asserts that blacks are only valuable for their labor which must be proved to whites/capitalism, even at the expense of one’s life, and that the only means of value is achieved through white/capitalistic approval, and that approval is more valuable than any suffering that a black person may endure to prove themselves.  It is propaganda, pure and simple, to convince blacks to continue to work themselves into the grave in order to prove their value to the capitalistic system.