The legend of John Henry and Biden’s outreach to Black men

The good news for the Biden campaign is that recent efforts to engage with certain segments of the Black electorate are hitting the mark. The bad news is that the campaign is still fumbling away chances to promote the president’s signature industrial policies as beneficial to working-class Black men.

As the Juneteenth holiday approaches, it may be appropriate to consider ways that Black labor culture can be used to appeal to this constituency. Some Black men are employed in occupations under threat by artificial intelligence and automation, according to a McKinsey study, “The Future of Work in Black America.”

But first, the good news: The Biden campaign has made strides to reach out to Black voters through professional organizations and associations. In May, Biden engaged Maryland’s Gov. Wes Moore as an advocate, spoke at the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, delivered the commencement address at Morehouse College, appeared at the NAACP in Detroit, hosted a state dinner honoring President William Ruto of Kenya and was interviewed on Black talk radio.

The campaign, however, has yet to demonstrate how the president’s industrial policy investments of $454 billion for infrastructure and $19 billion for electric vehicle retooling benefits the Black workforce. Both the Biden and Trump campaigns tend to rely on sports figures and hip-hop stars as emissaries to blue-collar men. The Biden campaign, however, is better positioned to honor the dignity of the Black industrial worker.

One way to distinguish the legacy is to resurface the spirit of John Henry, the legendary railroad worker in the pantheon of American labor folklore. Henry’s amazing feats of skill symbolized the hundreds of Black men who dug out the Great Bend Tunnel, a 6,500-foot tunnel near Talcott, West Virginia.

John Henry represented the 1870s construction trade known as the “steel driver,” who swung 10-pound sledgehammers to drill through the Big Bend Mountain. The drill was held by an assistant known as the “shaker” to dig holes for explosive charges. The gunpowder blasted away rock to excavate the tunnel for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway.

According to legend, John Henry was the most powerful steel driver around. One day, when the C&O company introduced a steam drill to replace the crew, he stood up for the workers. In an epic contest of man versus machine, John Henry, swinging hammers in both arms like wheels, outperformed the machine. In doing so, he saved the jobs of his crew, but later died of exhaustion. His story of courageous self-sacrifice was memorialized in songs like “The Ballad of John Henry.”

Regarding Biden’s outreach to Black men, the campaign should find ways to spotlight the image of John Henry today. Where, for example, are depictions of workers in the electric vehicle industry network of manufacturing, battery plants and charging station expansion? The administration recently announced $1.3 billion for the installation of stations at multi-family housing and public parking lots. It would be appealing to Black voters to see electricians from their communities installing EV charging stations.

The White House seeks to build a national network of 500,000 charging stations by 2030, which will require the hiring and training of many thousands of electrical workers by private contractors and companies. Biden can demonstrate a commitment to the policy of inclusive recruitment, employment and training of underrepresented workers in the industries of civil construction and EV manufacturing.

Of course, federally funded projects are subject to the equity provisions of the Fair Inclusion Law and the Infrastructure Law, among others. But history has shown that presidential leadership is needed to promote the participation of underrepresented labor groups. Black skilled workers have encountered discrimination in the construction trades for years, as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission documented in a 2023 report on workplace bias.

Such experiences spurred Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to speak out on behalf of racial equity for highway projects. It is essential, he said, to avoid a replay of the discrimination that occurred in the past. In addition, since the 1980s, immigrants legal and illegal have provided a source of cheap labor that contractors desired, and unions could not hold off, leaving Black labor the odd man out. Today, the racial demographic in the industry is 60 percent white, 30 percent Hispanic and 5 percent Black American.

As I have suggested before, Maryland could be a role model for the development of an inclusive and unionized infrastructure workforce. The state oversees two major federally funded infrastructure projects: The Frederick Douglass Tunnel project will renovate the 150-year-old former Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, and the Francis Scott Key Bridge will be rebuilt after collapsing in Baltimore Harbor when struck by a cargo ship.

The projects are expected to generate thousands of jobs in the construction trades and the white-collar fields that service the industry. Biden and Gov. Moore, however, may have to intercede to ensure that underrepresented classes are included as a priority. That’s because the Maryland Transportation Authority is soliciting private company bids to design and build the new bridge. The announcement, rather than promoting compensatory inclusion, prioritizes “speed and experience”; moreover, it seeks a single prime contractor for all phases of construction. In the past, such priorities likely meant the exclusion of Black American skilled labor.

The Biden administration must weigh the political and social justice question of recruiting Black industrial labor. The campaign should tout images of proud EV charging station workers, battery makers, iron workers, heavy equipment operators and EV service technicians, among others. In short, it should document the role that industrial policy plays in the development of the modern John Henry. 

Roger House is professor emeritus of American Studies at Emerson College and the author of “Blue Smoke: The Recorded Journey of Big Bill Broonzy” and “South End Shout: Boston’s Forgotten Music Scene in the Jazz Age.” His forthcoming book is “Five Hundred Years of Black Self Governance” (Louisiana State University Press).