Part One: John Henry Was Real & Also Became Superman

Margaret talks with Prop about the surprising history of the real man behind the legend of John Henry, a Black convict laborer whose story used to be told as a warning against the evils of bosses.

Stream Prop's new EP: Terraform: The Possibility

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Basketball former ref, former ref, former ref because he got
the acts Tonzo.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
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

(00:43):
host of Hood Politics.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
How are you, babe? What's up?

Speaker 4 (00:46):
Margaret?

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Tam me something good?

Speaker 4 (00:49):
Yeah, yeah, I want a body roll this whole episode.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
I want a body roll. Tam me that you lab me?

Speaker 1 (01:00):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:09):
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?

Speaker 3 (01:17):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 5 (01:29):
Yeah, you know what I'm saying. That's another one.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Yes, Yes, it's bad. It's bad. It really is.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
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.

Speaker 5 (01:54):
Have to play with alcohol, but if you do, let
me know how that goes for you.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
But I'm not allowed to with anything carbonated because Sophie
has prevented me from drinking anything carbonated while I record.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
I don't think it's I don't think it's me you're prevented.

Speaker 5 (02:08):
I think it's your I think it's.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
I didn't know that until you talk for three hours.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
You're a burper.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, So I feel like that's the most common edit
note I give its Sophie Well.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Ian takes care of that. Shout out Ian Johnson, who
is our editor of our podcast and our theme song
is by Unwoman.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
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?

Speaker 3 (02:43):
It's called The Possibility. It's the Final Terror Form EP.

Speaker 5 (02:46):
Hell yeah, amazing.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
When's it out? Is it already out or it's already out?

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Came out in what's the best what's the best place
for people to get to get info on your projects?

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (02:56):
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.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Loop and then turn it down and then go to.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
That they just go to bed, you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 4 (03:22):
Like run him numbers up, Like I really I would
really appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
Throw that in the show notes yep.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
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?

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Because you've had some good episodes recently. I mean they're
all good, but but you've had.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Some longer history of hip hop. One that came out
yesterday as is that fun?

Speaker 3 (04:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (04:03):
So far you can tell you on your Zone.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
Dude that Yeah, I was.

Speaker 4 (04:08):
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.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
You know, selection season.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
I love it, I'm saying.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
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.

Speaker 5 (04:48):
Action and his little minions.

Speaker 4 (04:51):
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.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
They didn't have his bonds, figured it out beforehand, figured
out ain't nobody helping.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
It's like, that's what your ass get you.

Speaker 4 (05:21):
Every ancestry you got was telling your ass you don't
trust the white people.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
You should have known.

Speaker 4 (05:27):
I know your If your mama alive right now, she'd be.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
Like, what see that?

Speaker 4 (05:31):
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.

(05:54):
You know what I'm saying, And I'm like, listen.

Speaker 5 (05:57):
I like to think of Sophie trust yeah, say that's.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
What I said.

Speaker 4 (06:01):
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?

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Yo?

Speaker 3 (06:15):
Say it so.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Anyway, prop Yes, what do you know about John Henry
the steel driving man?

Speaker 3 (06:22):
I know a lot about John Henry the steel driving.

Speaker 4 (06:24):
Oh yeah, yeah, okay, let's go.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
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,

(06:53):
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

(07:14):
something to be proud of. That's how I had heard it.
How would you heard it? Ex slave, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (07:20):
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.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
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.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
That's what it was.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Okay, Yeah, because he died slave, because he died as
a prison convict.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yeah, I didn't know he was a real person.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
Oh, real person.

Speaker 4 (07:47):
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.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, because your dad was your dad was into black
power politics, right, yes he was.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
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.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
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.

Speaker 4 (08:39):
This something came out recently, like you said, yeah, last
twenty years. I was like, no, this guy is incredibly interesting.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
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.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah. The like the model of like strong masculinity at
like beating machines. I love that for.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
Him, homie.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
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.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
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.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
Of yeah, yeah, the foundation building blocks.

Speaker 6 (09:40):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
And do you know that he's the model and inspiration
for Superman and Captain America.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
No, they're all.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Based on him.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
So you're telling me Superman is five foot one, yeah,
the black con he's a black as black convict.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
I love it. Yeah, I just I mean it doesn't
feed it. I mean it.

Speaker 4 (10:08):
Plays very well with my just belief that like black
people invented everything and.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
Yeah yeah yeah, And I'm like, well, here it is.

Speaker 4 (10:17):
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.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
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

(10:46):
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

(11:07):
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.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
You know.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
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.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
All that's pretty dope.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
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.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yeah, this is.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
A story about that too.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
That's dope. I got really excited when I like as
soon as I like good callback, Yeah, I was at
a book fair.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
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.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yes, Like I'm sorry what? Yes? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (12:26):
So before railroads, so I goanna talk about history railroad
because okay, should I do?

Speaker 3 (12:29):
I love context? All right.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
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

(12:52):
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,

(13:13):
taxpayer funded infrastructure is either operated by or just utilized
heavily by private enterprise who very conveniently don't pay a
lot of taxes.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
No.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
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.

Speaker 4 (13:31):
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.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
Pure I don't know, I don't know, capital of Illinois.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
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.

Speaker 4 (13:55):
Yeah, but yeah, yeah, it was like Springfield, that's it.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
Yeah, I remember third grade.

Speaker 4 (14:02):
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.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
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.

Speaker 4 (14:34):
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.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
And it was for a number of reasons.

Speaker 4 (14:56):
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.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
The Tongula tribe.

Speaker 4 (15:20):
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.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
Am I their missions?

Speaker 4 (15:31):
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.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
Which is shockingly one of the things they actually teach
in LA public schools learned. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool,
that's shockingly.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
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.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
Yeah, they could have been telling you amazing things.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
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.

(16:27):
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,

(16:47):
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,

(17:09):
built all the structures and shit like that.

Speaker 4 (17:11):
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?

Speaker 1 (17:22):
So it was before then. This is before then.

Speaker 4 (17:24):
But oh okay, because I was someing like when they
started bringing in the Chinese because they needed.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
Oh yeah, yeah, no, we're going to slave labor.

Speaker 4 (17:31):
Yeah yeah, anyway, sorry, my bad, No, no, top too
far forward?

Speaker 1 (17:37):
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

(18:01):
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

(18:21):
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

(18:45):
slave black men. There were one hundred and eighty nine
recorded deaths of workers digging this fucking tunnel.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
Of course there was.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
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

(19:15):
the southern elite threw, Yeah, eighteen sixty or so eighteen
sixty one.

Speaker 4 (19:19):
Yeah, but how about but like but we but we
like it, so we like, well how about this?

Speaker 3 (19:27):
How about we just keep owning them?

Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah, you don't understand I have power? Why would I
give up power?

Speaker 3 (19:31):
Why would I? Why would I? Why would I do that? Yeah? Yeah,
what's inn in front?

Speaker 4 (19:36):
I also think it's so you know, now, granted maybe
I'm just not a titan industry, but like, I just.

Speaker 3 (19:43):
Think just just just.

Speaker 4 (19:47):
The just the gonads on a person to look at
a mountain and be like, yo, let's just dig through it.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
We we dig through that, right, Like, well, what do
you what do you think? Take a couple of years.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, should we go around? Nah, I'll just go through.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
Let's just go through it.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
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.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (20:17):
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.

Speaker 6 (20:29):
Fa Yeah, yeah, no.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
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.

Speaker 4 (20:53):
Actually it's actually it's it it I imagine it's one
of those things that looks exactly like the name is.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
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.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Y'all just blew it up.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
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

(21:33):
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

(21:55):
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.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
It at the hill. Brilliant.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
They also weren't nearly as invested in slavery. They retained
way more European folkways, and they hated the rich fucks.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Down in the Lowland.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
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.

Speaker 4 (22:41):
Yeah, yeah, okayt yeah yeah. So that was that some
sort of colloquial way to say that, like their women
are dudes.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
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.

Speaker 4 (23:00):
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

(23:22):
Better Virginia. I say, I'm not actually from West Virginia.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
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

(23:48):
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

(24:10):
a lot of.

Speaker 3 (24:10):
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.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
We are sponsored by.

Speaker 4 (24:24):
We are sponsored by yahweh lohem ye.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
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,

(24:53):
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

(25:15):
the first murdered black men in the post Civil War
legal slavery known as prison slavery.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
We only know.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
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.

(25:42):
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.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
In the world at this point. Du yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
Have a feeling that this also is like of the
countries where they bother to keep tracking.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
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.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
Homie even there. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (26:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
After the Civil War, Virginia is kind of a big
open air graveyard because an awful lot of people died
in the Civil War.

Speaker 4 (26:35):
It's his bodies everywhere, just on your way to the
coffee shop.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
Hey look, yeah, I wonder that guy was I don't know. Yeah,
stay away from him.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
Though, whatever he owned a slave.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
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

(27:08):
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

(27:30):
really excited about the cash for bones business.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
That's huh.

Speaker 4 (27:36):
I'm just thinking it. There's bodies everywhere, like you could
ball out.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
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.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
Yeah, and what do you need? What do they want?
Bones for? Grind? Mum music? This fertilizer. Oh you turn
him into fertilizer.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, okay, which I mean, that's what I want when
I die. I want to be company.

Speaker 4 (28:08):
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.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
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.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
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

(29:02):
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

(29:24):
shocking to you. I bet you didn't know that Northerners are.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
Just as racist. Wait wait, no, what I know.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
It's almost like white supremacy is an endemic problem.

Speaker 4 (29:38):
But I thought, okay, wait a second, and I'm gonna
need a second.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
Okay, I'm ready.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
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

(30:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (30:27):
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.

Speaker 6 (30:38):
Yeah, Like, dude.

Speaker 4 (30:40):
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?

Speaker 1 (30:48):
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.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
It's just absurd. Yeah, these fools will give you like
you about to Like the eye idea.

Speaker 4 (31:00):
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?

Speaker 3 (31:18):
Nah? Give me the twenty first century fan.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
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.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
Right.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
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.

(32:00):
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.

(32:22):
People only talk about the white people on strike.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
Which is fucked them.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
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.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
You had no idea what that was.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
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.

Speaker 3 (32:51):
But we're not illegal yet, not just yet. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
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,

(33:15):
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.

Speaker 4 (33:30):
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.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
Yeah what you don't have a job. Yeah, they just
they just outlawed slavery.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 4 (33:45):
I just I've been a slave for twenty years. I'm
just yeah, I don't know. I don't know yet.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
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.

Speaker 4 (33:59):
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.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
Vote, Oh yeah yeah, they tope at people.

Speaker 4 (34:24):
Yeah like okay, that's pretty creative, like all like that
that was real creative. Yeah trash, Like yeah, trash, because.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
That's really creative.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
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

(34:54):
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.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
Right.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
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.

(35:26):
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

(35:49):
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.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
Yeah, I totally remember that.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
Yeah, yeah, that that's what happened.

Speaker 3 (36:06):
Did it again, Yeah, yeah, this is the prequel.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah, so John Henry is still in jail even though
the person arrested him as a literal whatever.

Speaker 4 (36:15):
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

(36:37):
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

(36:58):
go ahead and throw some throw some poison in the
well here here.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
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.

Speaker 4 (37:17):
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?

Speaker 3 (37:30):
You know what I'm saying. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
So.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
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

(37:57):
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.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
Yeah, they couldn't come up with that. They couldn't.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
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,

(38:41):
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.

Speaker 4 (39:01):
Oh man, please don't let Do you think the history's
going to repeat himself with that one?

Speaker 1 (39:05):
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.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
Know, Yeah, yeah, dude, yeah, I mean, I don't.

Speaker 4 (39:23):
I would never second guess Georgia like them Atlanta prosecuted
to say like, nah, we know we're doing this, like yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
It'll be interesting.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
Day.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
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.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
Yeah, he was.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
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.

Speaker 4 (40:02):
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.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
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.

Speaker 4 (40:37):
You know what's the crime? Yeah, Like the crime is
standing here? Who is the victim?

Speaker 3 (40:46):
Yes? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
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

(41:09):
fell and the government fled Richmond. They were like, yeah,
we're getting the fuck out of here.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
Yeah, woy would I stay?

Speaker 1 (41:14):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (41:15):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (41:16):
Imagine being the fifty who are left, Like maybe they
couldn't run, or maybe they were like.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
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.

Speaker 6 (41:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (41:28):
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.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
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.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
You just taught me some. Yeah, you just taught me some. Yeah. Wow, Okay.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
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.

Speaker 3 (42:10):
Damn John Hennery, we were branded, but like, yeah, god dog,
that's crazy. I didn't anyway, go on.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
Well, it's a whole new world. We can enslave people
through shadow slavery, so we can't brand people like.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
Right now, we can't brand because of political correctness.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Whope culture has gone too far.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
Whope cultures too far. Can't brand our niggers. Yeah, I'm sorry, guys.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
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.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
Won't do that?

Speaker 1 (43:01):
God, No, there's a lot of that in the Bible.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
Actually, Oh no, you'd be on the wrong side of
history on that.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
We're good.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
Yeah, maybe we should just do.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
Set the captives free.

Speaker 4 (43:13):
I've been hanging out with my moms. Man, Like I
had to go, like hang out with my mom.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
So I like I was at her.

Speaker 4 (43:18):
Little her little Baptist starts with her recently. So I
got all of it came back. Now, all the quotes
came back.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Yeah, good shit in there.

Speaker 4 (43:28):
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.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
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.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
Hey, we're back.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
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

(44:22):
shall have been duly convicted that shall exist within the
United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Speaker 4 (44:29):
Yes, I look, man, every time somebody bring up the
thirteenth Amendment, I just copy and paste the mug and.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Be like, yes, did you read the second half.

Speaker 4 (44:37):
There's an asterisk, guys, Yeah, there's an asterisk. Read the footnote.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
We have more work to do. Is a good thing
that we started and we need to continue it.

Speaker 3 (44:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
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

(45:10):
a really interesting study in why reform has some problems
in this kind of situation. Okay, Burnham wardwell, his name is.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
His name is?

Speaker 6 (45:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (45:22):
His name again, the warren is named Burnham Wardwell.

Speaker 4 (45:26):
Oh, some people are just it's you if some things
are just destiny.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
Yeah, you know, Sophie changed her name away from podcaster
to try and get away from fate.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
I get it, man, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
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.

Speaker 4 (46:02):
Oh oh so now so now the vinn diagram has happened.
Our worlds have converged right here.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
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.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
Would be tattoos. Yeah, like no waker would wizard in
my blood.

Speaker 6 (46:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
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.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
He sold ice. Would you say that he was a
rich man north of oh nice? I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 (46:42):
I've been trying to work this in all the time
since we're doing Virginia.

Speaker 3 (46:47):
Wow, I apologize.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
It was.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
It was. It was low hanging fruit.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
Literally, we're literally being a poet.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
You were trying.

Speaker 5 (47:00):
You can't turn that part of your brain off.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
If you want to hear prop sing snead O'Connor, you
can check out Oh yes, the episode on the history
of hip hop.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
So I needed to put some respect on old girl
name boy. I'd say Eric, Yeah anyway, the terrible person.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
But the remix of her song with Biggie's song when
Connor mac gregor walks out.

Speaker 4 (47:24):
Yeah, it's hard, it's pretty dope.

Speaker 3 (47:28):
It's pretty dope. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
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

(47:53):
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

(48:16):
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,

(48:36):
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

(48:58):
railroads need work. Why don't I lease out these prisoners
year round to the railroads? What could go wrong?

Speaker 4 (49:06):
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.

Speaker 3 (49:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
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.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
You know.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
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.

Speaker 6 (49:47):
Point and.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
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.

Speaker 3 (50:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (50:08):
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.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Yeah, dang.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
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

(50:37):
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.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
Look man, that's just a sigh hustle.

Speaker 4 (51:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I dealer got got some cold quotes.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
I'm sorry, so also did some cold blooded shit.

Speaker 3 (51:09):
Hey cold blooded you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
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.

(51:37):
If you're an American and your name is Covis Potter Huntington,
go back to England. I don't care where you were born.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
Yeah you don't. Yeah, just this ain't your hood.

Speaker 6 (51:45):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
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.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
I'm gonna have it.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
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.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
You had a blaze of creativity.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
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.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
How about that.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
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

(52:44):
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

(53:05):
the wrong place. Since some workers tried to take off
the lid. It took out several city blocks of San Francisco.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
Oh my god, Yeah, whose box is it?

Speaker 1 (53:15):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (53:15):
Hey, put it over there.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
It's not ticking. I'm sure it's fine.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
It's fine, it's just sitting there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
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.

(53:44):
There's another person.

Speaker 5 (53:45):
Anderson was dynamite for Halloween once.

Speaker 3 (53:47):
Did you get so? Was Henom?

Speaker 5 (53:52):
Yeah, instead of barking, that's just what came out of
her mouth.

Speaker 3 (53:56):
That's hilarious. That's crazy.

Speaker 4 (53:59):
I didn't know dynamite was like dang, it's like, yeah,
it's like Xerox Kleenex coke for your side of the country.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
Yeah, yeah, oh no, I'm a I grew up in
soda Land.

Speaker 3 (54:10):
Oh you're in soda Yeah, okay, near mind.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
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

(54:33):
of other people's brows and light the fuse. A most
cheerful and gratifying result will follow.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
Yo.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
That was poetry.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
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

(55:03):
a different story that you can hear the first episode
of the podcast.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
You slooped in so many things right now?

Speaker 4 (55:10):
Oh that was you know, you're watching birds and they're
just kind of like doing the thing.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
All of a sudden they get into sync. That's what
you just did right now. Thank you, thank you. Yes.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
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.

Speaker 6 (55:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:42):
I was gonna say it is Chinese over in San
Francisco in there. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (55:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
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

(56:07):
means a legend will be born, which we'll talk about
on Wednesday. It's a douche. I've been working on my cliffhangers.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
That was good man. Yeah, they liked it. That was
a good one. That deserves three body rolls one.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
All right, well, I'm glad you remember the body rolls.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
Oh yeah, no, no, no, everyone in the audience has thought
you've been doing it the whole time.

Speaker 4 (56:32):
The whole time, like it's hours where the body rolls. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Well we talked a little bit about how people can
find you, but how can people find Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
Hey, I think, uh you know, let's let's get you
guys some cold grew coffee.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
Man.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
Yeah, go to our website, the terra form coldbrew dot com.
It's really good, it really is.

Speaker 4 (56:55):
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

(57:16):
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.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
X Yeah, they changed the verb to post.

Speaker 3 (57:29):
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.

Speaker 5 (57:37):
Your logo looks like shit.

Speaker 4 (57:39):
But yeah, all right, when I tell you that logo like, wait,
where did I hear this?

Speaker 2 (57:43):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (57:43):
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.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Just distressed.

Speaker 4 (57:56):
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.

Speaker 7 (58:05):
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.

Speaker 4 (58:19):
Just bleeding cowboy font Yeah, defont dot com.

Speaker 3 (58:23):
Yeah, I gets a tattooed with the distress too.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
Yeah, no, of course it's a tramp stamp. Oh, I'd
be flawless, and it's I'm on.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
To it when he when he fights Zuckerberg.

Speaker 5 (58:37):
It's not fighting Zuckerberg, I know, but.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
I dream Zuckerberg.

Speaker 4 (58:40):
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.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
I know, I know, I'm.

Speaker 4 (58:49):
So mad at you for it, but I'm like Judo,
like that's full respect man like you.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
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.

Speaker 3 (59:02):
I'm cheering for Mark Zuckerbird, which is happening right now.

Speaker 2 (59:04):
Zacho beat that man's ass in like five seconds. That's
why he's not doing it. It's so I'm barrossing.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
Yeah, well, yeah, thank you for having me.

Speaker 3 (59:16):
I can't wait for this to hang off the cliff.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
Oh yeah, no one, I'm just going to step on
your toes for two days and then I'm going.

Speaker 3 (59:25):
To pull you up.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
So yeah, yeah, you can.

Speaker 3 (59:29):
You know.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
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.

(59:50):
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?

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
Ye.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media.

Speaker 5 (01:00:44):
Visit our website

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
Cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.