![]() ![]() John Henry struck a powerful blow with the sledgehammer, while the steam drill machine frequently broke down. The epic battle against the rock drilling machine involved John Henry as the “hammer man” working with a “shaker,” who would hold a chisel-like drill against mountain rock. When the contractor brought in the newly invented steam-powered drill in hope of cutting labor costs John Henry realized that his and hundreds more jobs would be lost if the steam drill was a success. In 1870 the formerly enslaved John Henry was employed as a steel driver by the contractor charged with building the Great Bend Tunnel in Talcott, West Virginia for the C&O Railway. Victorious over the machine, the legend goes that his heart gave out from the strain and he died with the hammer in his hand. His strength and skill were measured in a race against a steam-powered rock drilling machine. African American John Henry was known as the “steel driving man”. Some reports went as far as to suggest that Bill could change into an animal, and that’s why he was so difficult to catch. Newspapers of the time peppered stories of his exploits with slurs and other dehumanizing language, “his color merging with an almost inhuman evil,” Mathews explains. Because of this, the hunt for Railroad Bill extended far past the outlaw himself. Bill’s crimes only deepened the belief that newly-emancipated Black Americans needed to be controlled. This was during Reconstruction, and Alabama, like all of the South, “struggled to adjust to a new racial as well as economic order,” according to Mathews. He robbed trains throughout the state, having shootouts and evading capture, and not only did he sell the stolen goods to poor Black people at prices lower than company stores, his acts, though not condoned, were seen as “defiance against the white system and celebration of his ‘badness,’” Roberts writes.īill always stayed one step ahead of the police, and these weren’t the times for a Black person to outwit white authority. When Bill hopped onto that train and into the folk imagination, Black folklore often portrayed him in such a light. “Much of his reputation is based on the perception of the outlaw as one who rights wrongs.” The American outlaw is, “ seen as a man of the people,” Roberts writes. Roberts explains, the legend of Railroad Bill had all the hallmarks of a classic outlaw/folk hero. From that day on, he’d be known as Railroad Bill.Īs folklorist John W. Slater shot the officer, then fled, escaping either to the swamps or by hopping on a passing freight train. The request, according to some versions of the story, came because Slater had refused to pay taxes on the gun. He was approached by a policeman and asked to turn over his gun. As the story goes, one day he strolled into town with a rifle. Slater, as he was still known, was a turpentine still worker. The legend started somewhere, and for Railroad Bill it began in Alabama around 1893. As historian Burgin Mathews explains, Railroad Bill represented a “ powerful individual threat to white authority.”īut let’s go back. Railroad Bill differed from other outlaws because he was Black, and his race-and perceptions of it-intersected with a volatile time in US history. But his legacy as “an outlaw,” that infamous figure who ran up and down the American timeline, is a complex one. His name was Morris Slater, but he was better known as “Railroad Bill.” That’s the kind of name about which they write ballads, the kind of name that starts incredible stories: “Did you hear about Railroad Bill?” That was true for Slater, too. ![]()
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