Contents

19th and early 20th generations

Political term for poor farmers

The term characterized farmers having a red neck caused by sunburn from hours working in the fields. A citation from 1893 prov >[9] Hats were usually worn and they protected that wearer’s head from the sun, but also prov >[10] The back of the neck however was more exposed to the sun and allowed closer scrutiny about the person’s background in the same way calloused working hands could not be easily covered.

By 1900, “rednecks” was in common use to designate the political factions ins >[11] Precisely the same group was also often named the “wool hat boys” (for that they opposed the rich guys, who wore expensive silk hats). A newspaper detect in Mississippi in August 1891 called on rednecks to rally on the polls on the upcoming principal election: [12]

Primary on the 25th.
And the “rednecks” will be right now there.
And the “Yaller-heels” will be there, also.
Plus the “hayseeds” and “gray dillers”, they’ll be there, too.
And the “subordinates” and “subalterns” will be generally there to rebuke their slanderers and traducers.
And the men whom pay five, twenty, twenty five, etc . etc . per cent on borrowed funds will be accessible, and they’ll bear in mind it, also.

By 1910, the personal supporters in the Mississippi Democratic Party presidential candidate James K. Vardaman—chiefly poor white farmers—began to describe themselves proudly as “rednecks”, even to the stage of using red neckerchiefs to politics rallies and picnics. [13]

Linguist Pristine Eisiminger, based upon the accounts of informants from the Southern United States, believed that the frequency of pellagra in the region through the great depression might have written for the rise in popularity of the word; red, swollen skin is one of the first indications of that disorder to appear. [14]

Coal miners

The term “redneck” in the early 20th century was occasionally used in reference to American coal miner union members who wore red bandanas for sol >[15] It was also used by union strikers to describe poor white strikebreakers. [16]

Late 20th and early 21st centuries

Writers Edward Abbey and Dave Foreman also use “redneck percent error formula” as a political call to mobilize poor rural white Southerners. “In Defense of the Redneck” was a popular essay by Ed Abbey. One popular early Earth First! bumper sticker was “Rednecks for Wilderness”. Murray Bookchin, an urban leftist and social ecologist, objected strongly to Earth First!’s use of the term as “at the very least, insensitive”. [17] However, many Southerners have proudly embraced the term as a self- >[18] [19] Similarly to Earth First!’s use, the self-described “anti-racist, pro-gun, pro-labor” group Redneck Revolt have used the term to signal its roots in the rural white working- >[20]

As political epithet

According to Chapman and Kipfer in their “Dictionary of American Slang”, by 1975 the term had expanded in meaning beyond the poor Southerner to refer to “a bigoted and conventional person, a loutish ultra-conservative”. [21] For example, in 1960 John Barlow Martin expressed Senator John F. Kennedy should not enter the Indiana Democratic pres >[22] Writer William Safire observes it is often used to attack white Southern conservatives, and more broadly to degrade working >[23] At the same time, some white Southerners have reclaimed the word, using it with pr >[24]

In well-liked culture

• Johnny Russell was nominated for the Grammy Prize in 1973 for his recording of “Rednecks, White-colored Socks and Blue Bow Beer”, parlaying the “common touch” in to financial and critical success.
• Further songs referring to rednecks include “Longhaired Redneck” by David Allan Coe, “Rednecks” by simply Randy Newman, “Redneck Friend” by Knutson Browne, “Redneck Woman” by Gretchen Pat, “Redneck Yacht Club” simply by Craig Morgan, “Redneck” by simply Lamb of God, “Redneck Crazy” by Tyler Farr, and “Your Redneck Past” by Bill Folds Five.
• ‘Picture to Burn’ by Taylor Swift is another good country music using the term ‘redneck’, this time around in a adverse way, the place that the narrator phone calls her ex-boyfriend a ‘redneck heartbreak’.
• Frank Zappa’s song “Lonesome Cowboy Bert” which appeared on the soundtrack of “200 Motels” performed by The Mothers used the definition of.
• Comic Jeff Foxworthy’s 1993 humor albumYou Might Be a Redneck In the event that.cajoled listeners to gauge their own patterns in the context of stereotypical redneck habit.
• Redneck is described several times in Texas-based cartoon sitcom King of the Hill by Hank Hill’s bloodthirsty neighbor Schute. [25]

Outside the Us

Historical Scottish Covenanter use

In Scotland in the 1640s, the Covenanters rejected rule by bishops, often signing manifestos using their own blood. Some wore red cloth around their neck to signify their position, and were called rednecks by the Scottish ruling >[26] [27] Ultimately, the term began to mean basically “Presbyterian”, particularly in communities over the Scottish border. Because of the many Scottish immigrants in the pre-revolutionary American Southern region, some historians have recommended that this may be the origin with the term in america. [28]

Dictionaries document the first American citation of the term’s use pertaining to Presbyterians in 1830, since “a term bestowed after the Presbyterians of Fayetteville [North Carolina]”. [9] [27]

Roman Catholics

In North England throughout the 19th and 20th hundreds of years, Roman Catholics were generally known as rednecks. [29]

South Africa