JOHN HENRY: Tracking Down a Negro Legend

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1929. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. Sociologist Guy Benton Johnson (1901-91) investigated the African American folk hero in the late 1920s. He concluded that John Henry might have worked on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway's (C&O Railway) Big Bend Tunnel but that "one can make out a case either for or against" it. That tunnel was built near Talcott, West Virginia, from 1870 to 1872 (according to Johnson's dating), and named for the big bend in the Greenbrier River nearby. Octavo: [xii], 155 pp. with a frontispiece and textual musical examples. Original black cloth binding, with gilt-stamped titles. Light foxing to the frontispiece and the opposing leaves. The spine is leaning just a touch, with some minor wear to the corners and tips; else about very good. (Inventory #: 78192)