The purpose of this paper is to consider a different point of view as to why historically underrepresented minority students ultimately succeed in school, but do so at a cost (Goward, 2020). The authors argue that considering John Henryism, i.e., high-effort coping as a response to environmental stressors, as a source of motivation for historically excluded students' academic achievement, can allow stakeholders in higher education a more nuanced understanding as to how students overcome barriers related to their identity. The authors hope this paper can provide college and university professionals with a new lens to examine students' academic achievement as they confront and overcome systemic barriers. They argue stakeholders in higher education (e.g., administration, staff, faculty, etc.) should be investing in high quality systems of support (Rolle et al., 2021) to be able to get students from marginalized backgrounds to graduation, without having to rely on using John Henryism to get there.