Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, a podcast that Sophie hosts talking about Lebron James and why she doesn't like a particular ref in.
Basketball former ref, former ref, former ref because he got the acts Tonzo.
I'm your other host, Margaret Kiljoy, and I know more about the nineteenth century than I do, okay, first century because I live in a cave in West Virginia. But this story is about a cave in West Virginia. Actually, i'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. I might have already said that with me today as the actual guest is prop host of Hood Politics.
How are you, babe? What's up?
Margaret?
Tam me something good?
Yeah, yeah, I want a body roll this whole episode.
I want a body roll. Tam me that you lab me?
Yeah? I said, yeah, yeah, this one. This one's mostly positive. It's it's more positive than something. It's about hero But the things don't always go great.
God damn it, man, this is supposed to be cool people who do like this. This person was like, this is this isn't the one shining light of our week?
You know what I'm saying.
I just want to put it out there for those of you that play uh that that are able to play the cool Zone media drinking game. That was uh props props first one.
You know what I'm saying.
Yeah, you know what I'm saying. That's another one.
Yes, Yes, it's bad. It's bad. It really is.
You should see me editing, Like when I'm just at home recording myself doing the episode, I'm like, this is this is so bad.
First of all, first of all, don't ever change. Second of all, we're at two or three and it's already already and you don't.
Have to play with alcohol, but if you do, let me know how that goes for you.
But I'm not allowed to with anything carbonated because Sophie has prevented me from drinking anything carbonated while I record.
I don't think it's I don't think it's me you're prevented.
I think it's your I think it's.
I didn't know that until you talk for three hours.
You're a burper.
Yeah, So I feel like that's the most common edit note I give its Sophie Well.
Ian takes care of that. Shout out Ian Johnson, who is our editor of our podcast and our theme song is by Unwoman.
Intro's done well, actually no, because this time we're going to say that Unwoman has a new album out coming out September twenty. It's called Desire Paths. So does prop Oh really, yeah, what's your album call?
It's called The Possibility. It's the Final Terror Form EP.
Hell yeah, amazing.
When's it out? Is it already out or it's already out?
Came out in what's the best what's the best place for people to get to get info on your projects?
Oh?
Yeah, my website proptpop dot com. But on spot For some reason, the Spotify algorithm like gives you more like leverage when you're going into try to do other things, like you're yeah, that makes you know, book rooms and stuff like that. So if you're gonna stream the record, just propaganda dude on Spotify.
Loop and then turn it down and then go to.
That they just go to bed, you know what I'm saying?
Like run him numbers up, Like I really I would really appreciate that.
Yeah, listen, if you want to send me a link, less include that in the episode description. Can't do that, Send me whichever link you want to use, and Ian I'll throw that in there.
Throw that in the show notes yep.
Also, people should listen to politics. You probably already do because if you listen to this, you probably listen to all the Cool Zone show.
It's kind of like one of those things. Yeah, but it's worth listening to him. Yeah, why wouldn't you, man, why wouldn't you listen?
Because you've had some good episodes recently. I mean they're all good, but but you've had.
Some longer history of hip hop. One that came out yesterday as is that fun?
Yeah?
So far you can tell you on your Zone.
Dude that Yeah, I was.
I was in my bag there the next few episodes, like I'm in my bag because I'm like, this is this is one because like, okay, you know, election season is just like catnip for a show like mine, you know, And i mean.
You know, selection season.
I love it, I'm saying.
And Joe Biden's like, I mean, he's just like a large cheese pizza, you know what I'm saying. Like it's just it's just not enough going on. So I'm like, I need a world like crisis, you know what I'm saying. Dang it, there it is, and I need the cartoon that is Trump. And it's just like the guy's just so full of criminal.
Action and his little minions.
And his little minions. And the one I just finished, like we need to get to this show. But the one I just finished is about of the eighteen of the eighteen co defendants in the Rico case, two of them is black and one of them is still in jail right now. They left that nigga in jail.
They didn't have his bonds, figured it out beforehand, figured out ain't nobody helping.
It's like, that's what your ass get you.
Every ancestry you got was telling your ass you don't trust the white people.
You should have known.
I know your If your mama alive right now, she'd be.
Like, what see that?
What I tell you? What I tell you? Trusting them white people over there? You trusting white people? You know what I'm saying. I even said on this episode, God, we gotta move on. But I've even said I've even said on this episode. Now I'm talking systemically because some of you may point out that I am on cool zone media and I have in fact trusted them white people. You know what I'm saying, And I'm like, listen.
I like to think of Sophie trust yeah, say that's.
What I said.
I was like, Robert and Sophie have earned it. They cool as hell. They welcome to the barbecue. And if you ask them, and if you ask by asked, day with me. Okay, just so, don't bring no heat, don't bring the smoke, day with me?
Yo?
Say it so.
Anyway, prop Yes, what do you know about John Henry the steel driving man?
I know a lot about John Henry the steel driving.
Oh yeah, yeah, okay, let's go.
Yeah.
I'm kind of curious. The way I heard about John Henry as a kid, it was the same way I'd heard about Paul Bunyan's this folklore. There's no implication there was any truth to it. The basic story that I heard was there was a guy, his name is John Henry. He works on the railroads, and he's happy about it. Then the steam drill is invented, and he's like, whatever, I can beat the machine. I'm the strongest, biggest guy
in the world. So they race, presumably basically for John Henry. EGO. Yeah, John Henry wins, his heart gives out from exertion, and he dies. And the moral of this story, as it was presented to me, is like kind of weird. It's just like, I don't know, worked really hard and machines are sucked that they're bad. Dying on the job is something to be proud of. That's how I had heard it. How would you heard it? Ex slave, Yeah.
Found a job, was proud for that, and they worked him to death. So the moral of the story is don't trust in white people.
So the moral of the story says the same, don't trust the white people. He was born a free man and he died a slave.
That's what it was.
Okay, Yeah, because he died slave, because he died as a prison convict.
Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah.
Yeah, I didn't know he was a real person.
Oh, real person.
Yeah I now, granted I found that out much later, Like you know, yeah, I had the same childhood you did, where it's like, oh, yeah, he's like a Paul Bunyan like character. And then my dad was like, no, no, he was, he was a person. Yeah, it's like wait what yeah, then told me this, Yeah, told me the story like freedman became a slave.
Yeah.
Yeah, because your dad was your dad was into black power politics, right, yes he was.
Yeah.
That's what I was learning is that the only people who were actually telling this story accurately were black radicals in the seventies. Like that is like, yeah, but the actual figuring out who he specifically was is only twenty years old or something like that.
Yeah, I want to say there was a was there a documentary resent Oh, I don't know. I read a book about it, but maybe it was a book.
This something came out recently, like you said, yeah, last twenty years. I was like, no, this guy is incredibly interesting.
Yeah, okay, and that's what we're going to talk about. Yeah, John Henry was a real person. I didn't know that part. He was a black man, he was a prisoner, he was forced to work. He was all of five foot one.
I didn't know that.
Yeah. The like the model of like strong masculinity at like beating machines. I love that for.
Him, homie.
Yeah, he really did race esteem drill and he really did beat it, and it really did kill him. He didn't have a choice in the matter. Is kind of the big, big thing here.
Yeah.
His legend is also tied into the history of basically every style of music in America, blues, jazz, folk, country, rock and roll. Well not every style of music, but every the basis.
Of yeah, yeah, the foundation building blocks.
Yeah yeah.
And do you know that he's the model and inspiration for Superman and Captain America.
No, they're all.
Based on him.
So you're telling me Superman is five foot one, yeah, the black con he's a black as black convict.
I love it. Yeah, I just I mean it doesn't feed it. I mean it.
Plays very well with my just belief that like black people invented everything and.
Yeah yeah yeah, And I'm like, well, here it is.
Here's some more proof of that where it's like I keep telling myself, I know that's not true, but I just but I feel it in my bones.
Yeah, no, it yeah, I don't have a counter argument that's true, you know, like yeah, oh god, the way it ties into country music that is real dark. I can't wait to tell you about that one. Okay, So today we're gonna talk about motherfucker John Henry, the Steel driving Man, who is mostly remembered. At first, he wasn't remembered as a hero. He was remembered as a martyr. He was remembered as a warning about the dangers of
overwork and callousness and trusting white people and trusting white bosses. Specifically, most of what history knows about John Henry we know because of one historian named Scott Reynolds Nelson, who is He's still alive. He's a history professor at the University of Georgia. He writes books about reconstruction, about labor history and shit. He's like the person who knows the most about the Southern railroad labor history.
You know.
His book on the subject is called Steel Driving Man John Henry, The Untold Story of an American Legend, and it's worth checking out. And it's also the only book I've ever read for research for this show that has a cover blurb by Bruce Springsteen, which is.
All that's pretty dope.
Yeah, it is a story about railroads and the infrastructure of the US. It's a story about West Virginia. So I extra like it. And the first time you came on the show, prop you were talking about how so much of American music was developed in Appalachia between ethnic white folks and black folks getting together to do something cool.
Yeah, this is.
A story about that too.
That's dope. I got really excited when I like as soon as I like good callback, Yeah, I was at a book fair.
Basically, I was like, give me your history books. I'll you know, pretty much buy whatever. Ill. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a radical press that's mostly run by black folks that's out of Atlanta. And they were like, well, you know this book, John Henry is a real person. I was like, John Henry is a real person. This is the best present I've ever had as a history podcaster.
Yes, Like I'm sorry what? Yes? Yeah?
So before railroads, so I goanna talk about history railroad because okay, should I do?
I love context? All right.
So, canals were the main infrastructure in the US for moving cargo and people around before the eighteen thirties or so, and especially and most importantly, the canals were used, of course, to open up the West to steal shit from indigenous people. George Washington, famous horror monster of history with the wrong people's teeth in his mouth, was obsessed with making the Potomac River navigable past the Appalachian Mountains out out to Ohio. Yeah,
canals were really nasty to build. It was not nice. Lots of people died also, and this continues to this day. It involved using taxpayer money to bolster private enterprise. Which is basically the history of the transportation of the US. Yeah, taxpayer funded infrastructure is either operated by or just utilized heavily by private enterprise who very conveniently don't pay a lot of taxes.
No.
Also, do you know that apparently a ton of cities in the US the reason that they are where they are is because there was a waterfall and they were like, yeah, I didn't know.
I do like Chicago, like Chicago, Chicago because of the canals, because it's like, that's you know, it's not the yeah, capitals or you know what I'm saying, or right, is it.
Pure I don't know, I don't know, capital of Illinois.
It's not Chicago, right, it's never a city you think except no, yeah, not even New York City. I was let's say, ecept New York City, and I'm like, it's not capitally.
Yeah, but yeah, yeah, it was like Springfield, that's it.
Yeah, I remember third grade.
No, but but yeah, yeah, Chicago is one of those cities that's like, yah, it's just because they made a canal. Yeah, that's why it's there. But you said about waterfalls, yeah part of this yeah yeah.
Yeah.
Richmond, Virginia is where it is because there's a well there was there would have been a city wherever. It became an important city because there was a waterfall and people were able to hook up water wheels and then like run wild contraption like rope to go power all kinds of shit everywhere just using this one waterfall.
Also a fun fact about this is why downtown La is where it is, because we're the one. Every other skyline is on the coast, Like if it's a coastal city, there's skylines on the coast, Like LA's downtown is way inland.
And it was for a number of reasons.
One it was because like, yeah, our our ports didn't give itself well to being part of the canal situation because it's way over there on the west. And then secondly because of the indigenous tribe because the La River used to actually be a river, like you know, so it's where the tribes were because that was where most of the fresh water was, right so the tribes.
The Tongula tribe.
And then when when the Spaniards came, they just built their you know, pueblos and ship you know what I mean, they're they're what.
Am I their missions?
They built their missions right where the natives were, because the natives knew where the water was. So that's why downtown LA is where it is. It's and it's like one of the one of the few major yeah, one of the only major like major skylines.
Which is shockingly one of the things they actually teach in LA public schools learned. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool, that's shockingly.
Yeah, I didn't learn ship for local history. Sometimes though I talked shit on my history lessons as a kid, I also didn't pay a lot of attention.
Yeah, they could have been telling you amazing things.
Yeah, Like I didn't give a shit about history until I started caring about like what about politics and about like oppression and about fighting oppression and all these like yeah. Like once, I'm like I once I had a role. Once I was like, oh, this is a grand story that we are all part of. Then I was like history is a fucking amazing But as a kid, they were just like and I remember some of the lies. I remember because even some of the lies didn't make
sense as a kid, like being told about Thanksgiving. I'm like, this doesn't track. But so nineteenth century Great Britain is like hell, yeah, we're gonna do railroads, and the US is like, oh, I want railroads too, and the actual they had like gravity roads as they called them before that, but like it became a thing once you get the steam engine around basically, so the US wants it, and it does it in the way that US does it. They use public resources to build them and give it
to private companies. In this case, they turned the Army the Army Corps of Engineers, so taxpayer funded, privately owned the Army engineers surveyed and selected routes and build it, built all the structures and shit like that.
I was gonna say, also, you know, unfortunate for America to do what they normally do is like what aiden what the slaves are free now?
So it was before then. This is before then.
But oh okay, because I was someing like when they started bringing in the Chinese because they needed.
Oh yeah, yeah, no, we're going to slave labor.
Yeah yeah, anyway, sorry, my bad, No, no, top too far forward?
Yeah, no, it is in nineteen twenty seven you get the first passenger railroad in the country MH. And of course the South is building them with enslaved black people as well as underpaid Irish people who have it way
better than the enslaved black people. And the late eighteen thirties there's a guy who gets called the mad French engineer, Claudius Croze, and he's like, hey, Virginia, if you give me a fuck load of money, I can build tunnels through the Blue Ridge Mountains which connect Richmond, Virginia to the Shenandoah Valley. This is still within modern day Virginia. Yeah, and Virginia is like, hell, yeah, we'll float that bill. That's what we do, even though it won't be publicly
owned America rules. Is totally not a scam. It's definitely different than an oligarchy. They said all of that and the resources. By resources that they threw at it, they mean we mean enslaved black people. The longest tunnel, the Blue Ridge Tunnel, is almost a mile long, and it was paid. It was dug by two groups of people. There was eight hundred schittily paid irishmen who got less than a dollar a day, which is about thirty five
dollars in today's money. Imagine fucking living off of thirty to five dollars a day, and then forty unpaid and slave black men. There were one hundred and eighty nine recorded deaths of workers digging this fucking tunnel.
Of course there was.
Yeah, a lot of them died from cholera, from the shitty conditions that they were all living under. It was finished in eighteen fifty eight. It took about twenty fucking years, a little less than that, just in time to help a bunch of racist militias get over to Richmond from the big But we want to own people tantrum that the southern elite threw, Yeah, eighteen sixty or so eighteen sixty one.
Yeah, but how about but like but we but we like it, so we like, well how about this?
How about we just keep owning them?
Yeah, you don't understand I have power? Why would I give up power?
Why would I? Why would I? Why would I do that? Yeah? Yeah, what's inn in front?
I also think it's so you know, now, granted maybe I'm just not a titan industry, but like, I just.
Think just just just.
The just the gonads on a person to look at a mountain and be like, yo, let's just dig through it.
We we dig through that, right, Like, well, what do you what do you think? Take a couple of years.
Yeah, should we go around? Nah, I'll just go through.
Let's just go through it.
You're like, yeah, you're gonna go through a mountain. I just yeah, I'm willing to bet. No one who actually thought that they were going to be operating a hammer and a chisel thought to themselves, I'm gonna go through that.
Yeah.
Like you just you just looking at the little less you know what I'm saying, hack pick, and you're like, I bet you If I just keep chipping at this, I'm gonna get to the other side of a mountain.
Fa Yeah, yeah, no.
This is how I felt when I first learned about mountaintop removal coal mining, which is a big problem in Appalachia where instead of doing deep mining they literally just blow up mountains to dig through the rubble to get the coal. And it it's like too much problem. I wasn't able to rap, I wasn't able to put my head around it. Yeah, you know, until I went and saw it, and then it's really devastating.
Actually it's actually it's it it I imagine it's one of those things that looks exactly like the name is.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're inside of a mountain. But you're on top of a mountain and it's gone, and everything is bad.
Y'all just blew it up.
Yeah, So when they were digging through them, this enormously complicated feet of engineering and worker murder took about twenty years to complete, and it connected Virginia to Virginia. In order to reach Ohio, the Ohio Valley, which was the overall goal, there's the Alleghanies to get through, which are even bigger and actually harder, it turns out, and important
to the story. The problem with the Alleghanies from Virginia's point of view in a lot of ways, is that these are full of people who are entirely culturally removed from the rest of Virginia. These are the mountaineers, or the mountain whites as they were called at the time. They're poor as shit. A lot of them are descended from the Scots Irish immigrants who worked as servants for the rich to the north and then moved to the mountains because land was really, really fucking cheap as because
it was so hard to work. Couldn't you couldn't plantation it right? They lived on smaller homesteads. They had farms on such steep hills that the people would joke that the way you plant is that you like load seed into your gun and then just shoot.
It at the hill. Brilliant.
They also weren't nearly as invested in slavery. They retained way more European folkways, and they hated the rich fucks.
Down in the Lowland.
You can tell that I like them more than them. The lowlanders hated them right back, making fun of them for being backwards, mocking them for making furniture out of sticks that gets quotes, And how their women smoked pipes was a big like these fucking hills, that's a problem.
Yeah, yeah, okayt yeah yeah. So that was that some sort of colloquial way to say that, like their women are dudes.
I yeah, I mean, I guess so right, because they weren't being like properly fem because they probably like fucking chopped wood around the house and like, yeah.
Mad that that girl could beat you ass. Yeah. Because lots changed, thatesn't changes, okay anyway. In the case of the Alleghenies, in particular, when Virginia seceded from the US, about half of it went ahead and seceeded from Virginia and this is how you get West Virginia, aka the Better Virginia. I say, I'm not actually from West Virginia.
I live here, but I was like, Okay, I live here now though, so I gotta I gotta rep it. It is not exactly utopia, but to understand some of the cultural differences. Scott Reynold Nelson's the historian who wrote the book on John Henry. He described driving from Virginia to West Virginia as quote, Confederate bumper stickers were slowly being overtaken by those that read Union. Yes, West Virginia
was not historically a conservative bastion. It was one of the few places where, like the white rural working class was union and leftist. You get a lot of this is not what I'm covering today, but you get a lot of the unions were destroyed very consciously, and so a lot of.
The blue collar stuff kind of actually left. But prop you know, it will never leave you, oh or forsake me. Yeah, it's of Jesus, that's right.
We are sponsored by.
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That is the only sponsor today. And as always, if anything else slips through the cracks, you can write to our complaint department at I write, okay on Twitter, here's some ads for God, and we are back. And so the tunnels have started. They haven't gotten far enough. There's bigger mountains in the way. The Civil Wars just ended, which brings us to when John Henry enters the historical record.
So now we get to talk about him for a second. Unfortunately, we get to talk around him a lot today more than we get to talk about who he was, right, because he didn't we don't have anything he wrote. Yeah, John William Henry was born a free black man in eighteen forty seven in New Jersey. He becomes one of the first murdered black men in the post Civil War legal slavery known as prison slavery.
We only know.
The scarcest bit about which is I'll get into it, but shocking no one was entirely racist and was the continuation of the racist project. So we only know the scarcest bit about his life himself, who he was, what he liked to do. We know what happened to him because of the legal record. More or less, he grew up somewhere. He never got particularly tall. He's five foot one.
I spent a while looking up how tall this is compared to the average person in the nineteenth century, So the average men were huge in the United States compared to anywhere else in the world because the average man, the average white man fighting in the Union Army was five foot seven, and this makes the mismade men mend the third tallest.
In the world at this point. Du yeah, I.
Have a feeling that this also is like of the countries where they bother to keep tracking.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
The average and slave black man was about five foot six at the same time, as best as I can tell, because nutrition was not being provided properly anyway, So he's still short by he's still.
Homie even there. Yeah.
Yeah.
After the Civil War, Virginia is kind of a big open air graveyard because an awful lot of people died in the Civil War.
It's his bodies everywhere, just on your way to the coffee shop.
Hey look, yeah, I wonder that guy was I don't know. Yeah, stay away from him.
Though, whatever he owned a slave.
Yeah, exactly, especially this place called City Point in Virginia on the James River southeast of Richmond, which is where General Grant set up camp during the end of the war. There's a lot of dead people around. More Americans died in the conflict died in conflict in the Civil War than any other war including World War Two, not just as a percentage of the population, but like straight up number of uniform corpses. The Union Army hired thousands of x slaves into the US Burial Corps who went to
work burying people. However, meanwhile, a local fertilizer company was like a cash for bones business. At this point, no questions asked. So, wow, you could pick Yeah, you're you're really excited about the cash for bones business.
That's huh.
I'm just thinking it. There's bodies everywhere, like you could ball out.
Yeah. Yeah.
People showed up and delivered bodies to either burials and got paid some amount. I don't know the amounts that you were getting paid one job for the other, but I just assumed that the sketchy one was probably paid better.
Yeah, and what do you need? What do they want? Bones for? Grind? Mum music? This fertilizer. Oh you turn him into fertilizer.
Yeah, okay, which I mean, that's what I want when I die. I want to be company.
Dude, I found a I found a company that I told my wife put this in my will. Hell, yeah, this is what I want. Turn me in a fertilizer. Take the bag of fertilizer. Plant a mango tree. Hell, that's what I want.
Yeah, no, it's yeah. My daughter's like what I want? So are we going to be eating? I'm like, this is the flesh of my I was like, that's this Like Jesus, Yeah, you say, take communion. Yeah.
So John Henry, he's in the US Burial Corps. He just turned eighteen years old. The local racists, who I assume he just showed up, like, no one really knows, but it seems like he was like, I need work. We don't know what he was doing during the Civil War. We don't know whether he was like attached to the army and working in that way. But he's in Virginia and he gets paid. He's eighteen years old and he
starts getting paid to bury people. The local racists who had just lost a war to preserve slavery, they are not happy about the fact that suddenly all these black people live there because all of these people started working in the burial corps. Right, yeah, And Actually, it's around this point that Richmond becomes a black city for a while, and it's not just because the burial core. One of the problems that John Henry faced, though, is that bitter
Southerners weren't the only racists around. Is going to be shocking to you. I bet you didn't know that Northerners are.
Just as racist. Wait wait, no, what I know.
It's almost like white supremacy is an endemic problem.
But I thought, okay, wait a second, and I'm gonna need a second.
Okay, I'm ready.
All right, So there's his asshole. His name is Lieutenant Bird. He is a Union guy, and it's spelled with a U, not a I. I. I'm glad that an asshole wasn't named lieutenant Bird, because that'd be a cool name if it was with an eye. Yeah, he is a strange man with a strange story. He's a piece of shit. He's a Union officer from Maine, and he spent a long time as a prisoner of war, held by the Confederates who kept trying to get a musketball out of his head, like in his brain. He had a musketball
in his brain, but it didn't kill him. Also, the musketball was probably friendly fire, with the implication that maybe he was such an asshole that one of his own men shot him in the head. It could have been an accident.
I don't know.
List admit, I'm trying to tell you there's listen if y'all be a history buff, like, enjoy the past, but the past was a horrible place to live in.
Yeah, Like, dude.
There's no other era in life I want to live in. The man walk around with a musket and as they're trying to figure out, like, okay, how we get it out?
Like yeah, Yeah, they spend about seven months figure out how to dig it out, and then they just put larger and larger holes in his brain every time, and he kept surviving.
It's just absurd. Yeah, these fools will give you like you about to Like the eye idea.
Is if you get a if you get a cut on your arm, yeah, we're just gonna cut your arm off. And how we're gonna do that is give you some wood to bite down on and fit the whiskey. Yeah, and that's so just down this whiskey. Yeah, bite on this wood. Why saw through your bone?
Nah? Give me the twenty first century fan.
Yeah, no, I would. I would turnique it's better technology. Yes, absolutely so. Yeah. He survives all these wild eighteen sixties brain surgeries. He has a musket ball in his brain for seven months before they dig it out, and he ends up with this like huge growth on the side of his head.
Right.
I think he was probably an asshole before it. I'm not trying to give him any excuses. He was in the Freedman's Bureau, which is supposed to help black people get back on their feet, but it end it ends up a policing agency as well. And again with this idea where it's like, well, we're gonna be a policing agency so that the racist courts don't get you, you know, promise. He's a racist and he's in charge of a military tripunel. He delights in putting down revolts by former slaves. There's
good money in it for him. He illegally rents out the services of the Union Occupation Force to put down strikes. They put down a strike by black carpenters and blacksmiths at the South Side Railroad. They put down another one by black farmers, and then another one by black Steve Adores which is also just like, people don't talk about the nineteenth century being full of strikes by black people. People only talk about the white people on strike.
Which is fucked them.
So he's putting down all these fucking strikes. I had to look it up. A stevedoor or somebody who loads and unloads cargo off of a show.
You had no idea what that was.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So he's a private cop for the owners. Basically he sells off the services of him and his men to the highest bidders. His official duty was not any better. He ran a no jury military court for black people in the South, which meant that he enforced laws that were about to become illegal.
But we're not illegal yet, not just yet. Yeah.
The Black codes, Yeah, the Black Codes included laws like all men and women must have employers or be declared vagrants. This was theoretically for everyone. This was not It was only ever enforced against black people. Black people weren't allowed to testify against white people in court, and punishment for property crime shot through the roof, which is I mean, as a clear example of how they continue this racist control. Right as you change, you're like, oh, everyone's property crime laws.
The punishments have gone up. Never mind that we're only applying this or applying this wildly disproportionately to black people. Yeah.
Yeah, you just invent you'd like kind of invent loitering and trespassing. Yeah, you just invented, like I it's illegal to just be outside.
Yeah what you don't have a job. Yeah, they just they just outlawed slavery.
Yeah, I know.
I just I've been a slave for twenty years. I'm just yeah, I don't know. I don't know yet.
It's been a day. Yeah, I'm just I'm getting some fruit. Like, I'm just there's a there's a tree. I don't see why I need a job.
This is it's just it grows on the tree. I'm just grabbing the tree. Doesn't belong to anyone. I'm just Yeah. Also, that of a little of fun little doozy in those black codes of like when we now have the right to vote, was like, hey, well you can vote if your grandfather could.
Vote, Oh yeah yeah, they tope at people.
Yeah like okay, that's pretty creative, like all like that that was real creative. Yeah trash, Like yeah, trash, because.
That's really creative.
Yeah, so they open up all the old slave pens for vagrants pending trial, and to quote that author Scott Nelson, men and women without labor contracts could be picked up by police and auctioned off to the highest bidder for three months of labor. Those who tried to escape during their three month term could be used for an additional
three months and be bound with ball and chain. The old slave Patrol was brought back as a special police and Bird was selling people to the highest bidder, even though he was a union guy.
Right.
This monstrous state of affairs peaked in spring eighteen sixty six in Virginia. The black codes continue like all throughout, but like this particular bad set in Richmond, Virginia and the surrounding areas peaks in eighteen sixty six. And it was during spring eighteen sixty six that our man John Henry got picked up ostensibly for shoplifting credit where it's due. Congress and the Supreme Court will working against these black codes and got most of the ones in Virginia struck
down pretty quick. The Supreme Court was like, actually, you can't do a military trial while the civil court is in session. They passed passed the Civil Rights Active eighteen sixty six that said it's a crime to for state officials to subject people to different punishments, pains, or penalties by reason of his color. And then Bird the asshole with a bullet in his brain. He gets fired for
corruption while while John Henry is awaiting trial. But you remember when they legalized merrill and they didn't let any of the black men in prison free who were in jail for.
Yeah, I totally remember that.
Yeah, yeah, that that's what happened.
Did it again, Yeah, yeah, this is the prequel.
Yeah, so John Henry is still in jail even though the person arrested him as a literal whatever.
Criminal and was said that you weren't allowed to do what you did. But he's still sitting in jail. Also, fun fact about this time too, that a lot of people don't know is that, like before they got these black codes up and running, like the amount of like black people that got elected to office like skyrocketed. Yeah you know what I'm saying, because like, oh well, we just gonna put us, you know what I'm saying, Like entire cities had entire black city councils, you know, because
it was more of us. And too is like, oh, we're we get to say who in charge? Yeah, we get to wait, we get to choose them. Well, we're gonna choose this fool, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, And then they was like, oh, whoa, whoa, the system works too well, let's uh, let's go ahead, and let's go ahead and throw some throw some poison in the well here here.
I spend way too much of my time anytime I read anything about the nineteenth century in the US, I just like spend so much my time thinking about, like, what the fuck could have happened if if reconstruction had worked, if it hadn't been destroyed by dude racism, you know, like.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so just like the flying cars, like the flourishing Yeah yeah, I'm saying, had we dealt with this shit two centuries ago?
You know what I'm saying. Yeah.
So.
The one thing that John Henry got out of all of this, the stuff that wasn't retroactive, is it did give him an actual trial instead of a Freedman Bureau's jury list court. All this did for him is slow down the inevitable and give it the veneer of legitimacy. His actual trial had an all white jury, and the judge was a Southern racist who was mad at the Northern radicals. The court really had to put in their
best work. They really put in the overtime to make his case of felony, because you had to shoplift more than twenty dollars for it to be a felony. All of the goods to combine in the store that he supposedly robbed were worth fifty dollars. So they're like, well, you robbed half the store. But they couldn't.
Yeah, they couldn't come up with that. They couldn't.
So what they did is even though this didn't it didn't have an apartment above it, it was just a fucking store, they pretended like the guy lived there and so that it was housebreaking. So now it's a felony, and you know, courts are racist. But another trial in Virginia is happening. This started the same day as his, which would have been a really interesting trial and I wish it had gone through. It is the first intererrational,
interracial jury in the state's history. It is the treason trial for Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of America. Oh wow, But the federal prosecutors lost their nerve and they call the trial off.
Oh man, please don't let Do you think the history's going to repeat himself with that one?
I know, That's all I was just thinking about. I was like, this is why all the racists are so mad, right that Trump's on trial, is that they're like, you're not allowed to put a president on trial. And it's probably we got away with it with Davis, you.
Know, Yeah, yeah, dude, yeah, I mean, I don't.
I would never second guess Georgia like them Atlanta prosecuted to say like, nah, we know we're doing this, like yeah, yeah.
It'll be interesting.
Yeah.
Day.
But the trial that they're not afraid to call off, that's more important to the government than the trial of Jefferson Davis is a trial to put John Henry In, a nineteen year old black kid, in prison for maybe but probably not shoplifting.
Yeah, he was.
Convicted and given ten years for house breaking in a store that wasn't a house. It is also completely possible that he never shoplifted a thing. Bird was arresting people for striking and accusing people of why old shit everywhere he could.
Yes, and I mean and you again standing Yeah was illegal? Yeah, I can't so you just can't be standing there? Yeah, do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, this I can't stress enough how absurd that is.
Yeah. Yeah.
Anyway, No, I like when I used to get a hassle for loitering when I was a street kid. At one point I finally like printed out the Maryland law about loitering and was like, brilliant, I'm not legally loitering in the cops like, I don't care, give me your ID.
You know what's the crime? Yeah, Like the crime is standing here? Who is the victim?
Yes? Yeah.
So November eighteen sixty six, John Henry was transported to the Virginia Penitentiarre Pennant whatever prison on a steamboat up the river past the wreckage of the Civil War. At this point, the penitentiary, I think I got it right, held five hundred inmates, most of them were new because all but fifty inmates escaped in April when the Confederacy fell and the government fled Richmond. They were like, yeah, we're getting the fuck out of here.
Yeah, woy would I stay?
Yeah?
Yeah?
Imagine being the fifty who are left, Like maybe they couldn't run, or maybe they were like.
You're so pissed off. I know, I know you'd like y'all didn't waked me up. Yeah, nobody could have went Nobody woke me up.
Yeah.
I was saving corn brand for y'all this whole time. Yeah, we was in jail. I was saying extra food for y'all. Y'all ain't wake me up. Yeah, so pissed off.
Yeah, John Henry was innate four hundred ninety seven, and this one was a new every day learned new bullshit about America. Any black convict who showed up who didn't have a scar was given one so that they could be identified because they can't kill black people apart.
You just taught me some. Yeah, you just taught me some. Yeah. Wow, Okay.
And I don't know whether this is because I know that at least the guy who's doing it there gets fired and we'll talk about that. But I'm sure that this is a regular practice. You know.
Damn John Hennery, we were branded, but like, yeah, god dog, that's crazy. I didn't anyway, go on.
Well, it's a whole new world. We can enslave people through shadow slavery, so we can't brand people like.
Right now, we can't brand because of political correctness.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Whope culture has gone too far.
Whope cultures too far. Can't brand our niggers. Yeah, I'm sorry, guys.
No, no, John Henry had or received a scar on each arm. Black prisoners outnumbered white prisoners tend to one. Eighty percent of them were arrested for property crime, and so begins America's wonderful legacy of continuing to use black people as slaves. Yeah, but you know what.
Won't do that?
God, No, there's a lot of that in the Bible.
Actually, Oh no, you'd be on the wrong side of history on that.
We're good.
Yeah, maybe we should just do.
Set the captives free.
I've been hanging out with my moms. Man, Like I had to go, like hang out with my mom.
So I like I was at her.
Little her little Baptist starts with her recently. So I got all of it came back. Now, all the quotes came back.
Yeah, good shit in there.
Look, look, look the greatest look, let me tell you the greatest rappers in orders you will ever hear is that black preaching boy? Yeah, my man got sayings anyway.
Yeah, I know what else has sayings is whatever we're advertising today, which we definitely hand picked because we specifically care and we will be personally hurt if you don't buy these things.
Hey, we're back.
So prison slavery, convict labor is not the same thing as chattel slavery. It is good that we got wrote of chattel slavery, but it is I'm not being hyperbolic when I call prison labor slavery. The Thirteenth Amendments of the Constitution of the United States reads neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime, whereof the parts shall have been duly convicted that shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Yes, I look, man, every time somebody bring up the thirteenth Amendment, I just copy and paste the mug and.
Be like, yes, did you read the second half.
There's an asterisk, guys, Yeah, there's an asterisk. Read the footnote.
Yep.
We have more work to do. Is a good thing that we started and we need to continue it.
Yeah.
So these convicts, mostly black, are least to do labor all over the place. Richmond was rebuilt after the war to end black slavery with black slavery conditions are really bad within the prison. But this, this far is interesting. I mean, a reformer steps in as the warden trying to set things right in the Virginia penitentiary. He's honestly a really interesting study in why reform has some problems in this kind of situation. Okay, Burnham wardwell, his name is.
His name is?
Yeah?
His name again, the warren is named Burnham Wardwell.
Oh, some people are just it's you if some things are just destiny.
Yeah, you know, Sophie changed her name away from podcaster to try and get away from fate.
I get it, man, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He was a radical Republican Quaker. Quakers are really interesting because, in one hand, they were the largest organized group of white people fighting and dying to free black people before the Civil War. They also invented the penitentiary and the modern prison system by accident. Yeah, and Burnham he is to descended from convicted wizards.
Oh oh so now so now the vinn diagram has happened. Our worlds have converged right here.
Yeah, okay, yes, his ancestors got murdered in the Salem which trials for being wizards. I would own the ship out of that. If I was him, I.
Would be tattoos. Yeah, like no waker would wizard in my blood.
Yeah.
So he had moved before the war. He was living in Richmond and he was a successful businessman. I want to say he was an ice dealer or something that's not code for anything.
He sold ice. Would you say that he was a rich man north of oh nice? I'm sorry.
I've been trying to work this in all the time since we're doing Virginia.
Wow, I apologize.
It was.
It was. It was low hanging fruit.
Literally, we're literally being a poet.
You were trying.
You can't turn that part of your brain off.
If you want to hear prop sing snead O'Connor, you can check out Oh yes, the episode on the history of hip hop.
So I needed to put some respect on old girl name boy. I'd say Eric, Yeah anyway, the terrible person.
But the remix of her song with Biggie's song when Connor mac gregor walks out.
Yeah, it's hard, it's pretty dope.
It's pretty dope. Yeah.
So our guy is an iced dealer living in Richmond, and he refuses to leave on the South seas. I think he wants to stay and look after his business. But he's really obviously an abolitionist and a Quaker, so he spends the Civil War in Confederate prison. He actually sat on the mixed race jury for Jefferson Davis, and there's a photo of him in the jury, and I wish he had just been one of the men to convict Jefferson Davis instead of one of the people who
got the US going on convict labor. Because this reformer, he's put in charge and he wants to fix it around the prison. He cleans and he fumigates the place, he gets he gets better blankets for the coming winter, brings a Quaker from Philly to run a school for the inmates. He replaces all the shittiest guards, including the guy in charge of scarring black men. And he also got rid of and I can't believe that this was a thing that they had to get rid of. He
got rid of the well, he got two things. One was the literal medieval rack that they had for torture. And he also got rid of you know, the like the phrase the hole for solitary confinement. Yeah, yeah, in Virginia, it was a hole in the ground and they put you in the hole and then they put wooden boards across the top. He got rid of all that shit because he actually genuinely cared and did the wrong thing after this, because he was like, well, all this reform
costs money. Where can I get some money? Previously prisoners had only been leased out seasonally. He's like, well, these railroads need work. Why don't I lease out these prisoners year round to the railroads? What could go wrong?
I wonder if in his head he's like, this is an honest day's pay, like this is reform because he seems to have but yeah, yeah, like a smudge of dignity inside of him. So he's like, let's let's give these guys dignity. They could work for work to earn their key.
Yeah.
No, And he personally goes out to check out the railroad camp. He is like, I need to make sure that these people will have like food and shelter, and like yeah, yeah, yeah, And he was like the food is fine.
You know.
He was like, Okay, this is going to be okay, let's go, and he leased out two hundred and twenty five black men to the railroad, including John the Hammer Henry, who was probably not called John the Hammer Henry, but it could have been. He was twenty one years old at this.
Point and.
Wardwell later he's not only like, oh, I was definitely wrong. He spent the rest of his life fighting against prison labor and the convict lease system. Wow he is so interesting. Wow he gets yeah, go ahead.
Yeah.
He was just like, God, I like I regret it, Like I regret what happened. I thought I was doing a good thing, and I tried to make it right.
Yeah, dang.
He gives speeches about how convict labor does two bad things. One it fucks up the free working class who can't compete, and two that it killed convicts because, unlike free laborers, they couldn't quit if the conditions got too bad. So he like knew what was wrong with it. It wasn't just like, oh, it would have been fine, but the conditions were bad. He was like, no, this is a
bad idea to its core. His tombstone, says, has a lot of quotes on It's a big quote quote filled tombstone, and it includes when the innocent is convicted, the court is condemned and remember them that are in bonds so like yours. But he takes it seriously. Ice dealer is not his main fucking vocation.
Look man, that's just a sigh hustle.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I dealer got got some cold quotes.
I'm sorry, so also did some cold blooded shit.
Hey cold blooded you know what I'm saying.
Because the railroad camps that he sells all these men to, they get way way worse. Railroad politics of reconstruction era America are convoluted as fuck. But basically it's the same thing where public money fund funds private enterprise. Shortly thereafter he goes out and he checks out the railroad. Then the railroad changes hands and it's now owned by an asshole named Covis Potter Huntington, which is just not a course. If you're an American and your name is Covis Potter Huntington,
go back to England. I don't care where you were born.
Yeah you don't. Yeah, just this ain't your hood.
Yeah yeah.
It became the Chesapeake and Ohio instead of the Covington in Ohio, and they were given millions of dollars from the state. Plus all these convict laborers and they were given six months to build a railroad to Ohio, which everyone was like, that can't be done, but he was like.
I'm gonna have it.
I'm gonna do it. He goes to West Virginia and he founds a town named Huntington. Also, you just shouldn't. Other people can name towns after you, but if you name you are on the town man yourself.
You had a blaze of creativity.
Yeah, he's like, he's looking for a name, he doesn't know many words, looks at his lease or whatever the fund has. Yeah, Ton's the that's the ending of a town.
How about that.
Yeah, Virginia almost bankrupted itself funding the cno railroads construction. And I've read some stuff that talks about how this impoverished the South and led to a lot of the like newly freed people going hungry and fucked up the economy. And it gets a little bit beyond my understandings. Hunting And is like, I can do it in six years, and people are like, but it can't be done, and he's like, well I can thanks to the miracles of
modern science. Nitroglycerin, which is about ten times as explode as gunpowder by volume, so the same drilled whole packs of like packed full would be wildly more effective. It is insanely dangerous to handle a box of this stuff in San Francisco. Had just like it was like in the wrong place. Since some workers tried to take off the lid. It took out several city blocks of San Francisco.
Oh my god, Yeah, whose box is it?
Yeah?
Hey, put it over there.
It's not ticking. I'm sure it's fine.
It's fine, it's just sitting there. Yeah.
Then a guy named Alfred Nobel, more famous for other works, hmmm, found a way to stabilize nitroglycerin, mixing it with gunpowder and clay, inventing dynamite, which was a trademark name. I had no idea serious, it's like clean handed, yeah, totally. Oh my god, I did not know that. Yeah, I forgot to write down the name of the main competitor. There's another person.
Anderson was dynamite for Halloween once.
Did you get so? Was Henom?
Yeah, instead of barking, that's just what came out of her mouth.
That's hilarious. That's crazy.
I didn't know dynamite was like dang, it's like, yeah, it's like Xerox Kleenex coke for your side of the country.
Yeah, yeah, oh no, I'm a I grew up in soda Land.
Oh you're in soda Yeah, okay, near mind.
About ten years after today's story, a black anarchist in Chicago, Lucy Parsons is a quote about dynamite that I'm just going to work into this because I think it's fun. Dynamite of all the good stuff, that is the stuff, several stuff, several pounds of this sublime stuff into an inch pipe, plug up both ends and sert a cap of the fuse attached. Places in the immediate vicinity of a lot of rich loafers who live by the sweat
of other people's brows and light the fuse. A most cheerful and gratifying result will follow.
Yo.
That was poetry.
Yeah no, she is an amazing writer and she's hard as fuck. All of our all of our stuff is like I mean, all of our stuff is really poetic stuff about how you should stab and kill all the rich people and take everything back from them. The actual result in Chicago wasn't really cheerful gratifying. Her husband actually ends up hanged basically for publishing her words, and that's
why we have May Day, the workers holiday. But that's a different story that you can hear the first episode of the podcast.
You slooped in so many things right now?
Oh that was you know, you're watching birds and they're just kind of like doing the thing.
All of a sudden they get into sync. That's what you just did right now. Thank you, thank you. Yes.
So, Nigel Glistenering is on the scene and a lot of Irish laborers who are doing most of the work as we talked about, but not all of it. They were like, I'm not touching that shit. That is too dangerous. So out west they start and out west, and I don't know if it's entirely related to the Irish. I think the Irish were mostly on the East coast. They start relying more and more on indentured Chinese labor.
Yeah.
I was gonna say it is Chinese over in San Francisco in there. Yeah.
Yeah.
And one of the things that doesn't get talked about is that most of the Chinese laborers who built the Transit trans Continent a railroad were indentured, held for like four or five year stints. So they now have dynamite instead of gunpowder, and they had trained cars to pull the rubble out. The only slow part of the process left was the drilling, which means steam drills, which means a life and death race between man versus machine, which means a legend will be born, which we'll talk about
on Wednesday. It's a douche. I've been working on my cliffhangers.
That was good man. Yeah, they liked it. That was a good one. That deserves three body rolls one.
All right, well, I'm glad you remember the body rolls.
Oh yeah, no, no, no, everyone in the audience has thought you've been doing it the whole time.
The whole time, like it's hours where the body rolls. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well we talked a little bit about how people can find you, but how can people find Yeah.
Hey, I think, uh you know, let's let's get you guys some cold grew coffee.
Man.
Yeah, go to our website, the terra form coldbrew dot com. It's really good, it really is.
Use promo code hood get you fifteen percent off man, you know, just for our cool zone folks. Yeah, dude, man, prop hip hop is all the things still on Instagram and X because listen if if a platform wants to change his name, I will honor if they're choosing it. You know, listen, if that is your choice, pronoun now, I will honor your choice.
X Yeah, they changed the verb to post.
They changed their verb to post. If you're going to change your verb, yeah, who am I to judge you? Now? I don't have to use it.
Your logo looks like shit.
But yeah, all right, when I tell you that logo like, wait, where did I hear this?
Oh?
Cody said, it look like a men's what do you say, like a like a men's soap, like a men's lotion bottle. Yeah, from twenty years ago, from twenty years ago.
Just distressed.
My man took an x at put distressed filter on it. Photoshop three point Oh that's not even like, that's not even creative suite.
That's just three point oho photoshop. Yeah, this is incredible. No, he just never changed his aesthetics from the late nineties, and he had the worst possible aesthetics available in the late nineties.
Just bleeding cowboy font Yeah, defont dot com.
Yeah, I gets a tattooed with the distress too.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, of course it's a tramp stamp. Oh, I'd be flawless, and it's I'm on.
To it when he when he fights Zuckerberg.
It's not fighting Zuckerberg, I know, but.
I dream Zuckerberg.
Zuckerbird is the hero, and this because he's now or at least a miracle worker, because he figured out how to make us cheer for him.
I know, I know, I'm.
So mad at you for it, but I'm like Judo, like that's full respect man like you.
Because he would wipe the floor with him, and I want it to happen. And I'm like, why do I want it to happen? Zuckerberg is evil, but not as I don't know.
I'm cheering for Mark Zuckerbird, which is happening right now.
Zacho beat that man's ass in like five seconds. That's why he's not doing it. It's so I'm barrossing.
Yeah, well, yeah, thank you for having me.
I can't wait for this to hang off the cliff.
Oh yeah, no one, I'm just going to step on your toes for two days and then I'm going.
To pull you up.
So yeah, yeah, you can.
You know.
I had the thing I was going to remember to plug, and then I remembered what it was, and now I've forgotten again. I don't know what it is there. There's this thing I keep thinking. I'm like, I need to remember to plug this thing, and I don't remember what it is, but I guess. In the meantime, I'm on Substack. I post weekly. I have another podcast called Live Like the World's Dying about individual community preparedness. A bunch of books. Most recent one is called Escape from Insul Island. It
does what it says on the cover. You can read it if you have a short attention span. This is the book for you. It is very short and fast. Pay uh, Sophie, what do you got?
I got a plug for a mini series running on It could happen here around the time. This episode is originally dropping done by James Stout, so look out for those James Southberry, talented journalist and writer. We haven't named it yet, but it's it's about the Marshall Islands.
Oh, that explains the messages from him about the Marshall Islands. It's all coming together. He was just there, Yeah, exactly, all right. I'll see you on Wednesday.
Ye.
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