Disney is a company who creates films and movies targeted to children. Therefore, most of the settings are fictional such as Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella. Even their historical films are based on warped realities. Such examples are seen in Pocahontas and Davy Crockett. Does the setting in the film of John Henry also fit into this category? Unfortunately, the freedom portrayed in the film was non-existent. All was not well for the freedmen even after the Emancipation Proclamation. The life of a freedman in the South was harsh in work, society and in the courts as well.
The people of Disney seem to have made the same mindsets as most of the academic song collectors. Their movie promoted and celebrated the life and work of John Henry. They incorporated an upbeat song in time to the hammering, supposedly to inspire the other workers. But in reality, Nelson notes that the true meanings of the folk songs of John Henry were depressing and bitter. “They cursed hard work, bosses, and unfaithful women. They predicted pain and death.” (Nelson, 30) Disney also warped the working conditions of the railroad by portraying a sort of idyllic, peaceful occupation free from danger. Henry Grady, a former worker of the railroad, recalls” mangled bodies…and the use of state convicts to raise the road beds” and all for the lowest paying job of railroad work! (Nelson, 25-26)
If the movie could reverse our view of folk songs and of the working conditions, then what does that say of their portrayal of Post-Civil War South? We can first examine the interactions between the whites and blacks of society during this time. Many local whites resented the influx of blacks moving in. In City Point, an editor of the “Petersburg Daily Index” expresses anger of the locals along with a derogatory name of “Cuffee” for the newcomers (Nelson,44). In Prince George County, tensions would sometimes come to a peak and a drunken brawl would break out in Wiseman’s grocery (Nelson,46). But in the larger scope, the newly freedman were in a precarious position. In 1865, “Virginia legislature….defined crime somewhat differently than what we do today. Among the objectionable crimes were ‘vagrancy’ and ‘air of satisfaction’.” Though, the laws were written as race neutral, the enforcement only seemed to follow the freedman. And society slowly regressed back a state similar to slavery. “Men and women without labor contracts could be… auctioned off to the highest bidder for three months of labor. Those who tried to escape….could be bound with a ball and chain.” Virginia also formed a “special” police that had the power to go around and arrest “rouges”, as the Petersburg paper called them. These laws would be called “black codes” by critics (Nelson, 52-53). Adding uncertainty to an arrested black person was the courts. In 1866, the case Ex Parte Milligan ruled that no military courts could operate when civil courts also operated. This brought many blacks out of the jurisdiction of the Freedmen’s Bureau and into the mercy of the black codes. However, 6 days later, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 made it a crime for a person to receive different penalties for a crime based on race. Bureau officials could protest the ruling of the civil courts and bring it to the district courts (Nelson, 54-55). Freedmen in the South were not in a good situation. If they abided by the law, they would certainly be abused by it. But if they broke it, they would have to gamble their fates to how much the court thought it could get away with along the Bureau official’s disposition.
From a life of constant slavery to a life of uncertainty, the freedman were not truly free with the rights of citizen was supposed to be. Disney’s John Henry may have said “never again” to slavery but it seems he wouldn’t have had a choice at the time. It might be said that Disney did not mean to convey historical accuracy but rather the moral of determination and hard work. But in order to acknowledge how far the country has come and to preserve the knowledge of the past to be used in the future, we must acknowledge history in truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Certainly, the Emancipation Proclamation officially ended the institution of slavery in the South but it can not be said that it freed the slaves.