What is the history of the term "redneck"?
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M$5 Answers
The descriptive words themselves appear to have been derived from three possible sources:
1 - Farmers whose necks were sunburned,
2 - Malnutritioned people (generally poor) who contracted the disease pellagra, which turns the skin red,
3 - Coal miners of West Virginia who wore red bandannas about their necks.
Redneck was in general use by the late 1800s, but first appeared in print in the USA in 1830 where it was reported by a woman name Anne Newport Royall that the Presbyterians in Fayetteville were referred to as "Rednecks."
The current connotation of the word seems to be derived from general historic observation of the Scot-Irish and Scottish settlers of the general south (Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North and South Carolina, Tenessee, Kentucky and Georgia). These Scot-Irish were descendants of Celtics (versus Anglo-Saxons) and were known for their fierce loyalty to family (kin), distrust of government, and general fighting spirit. Their ancestors were from Ulster Province, Ireland and the Scottish lowlands, where they were described as war-like herdsmen. These immigrants perpetuated old Celtic traditions of honor and clan.
These Scot-Irish immigrants were generally cash poor. They lived in rural areas where it was difficult to get their crops to market, and were particularly hit hard by the tax on distilled liquor in 1791. They argued this and eventually it led to the Whiskey Rebellion. Their ancestral personality-ways were pretty militant and are attributed to causing and perpetuating other conflicts such as the Hatfield-McCoy feud. That same militancy was also behind their providing unusually high percentages of volunteers for the American Revolution regiments and other wars.
Other major events throughout American history such as the Civil War and the Dust Bowl (which decimated their farming activity) caused great hardship on rural poor Celtic descendants. After the Civil War (late 1800s), the slang use of of the term redneck was deteriorating from meaning "poor white" (financially speaking) to "poor white trash" (financially and genetically inferior). The Civil War caused the vast majority of former black slaves to become destitute, and poor rural farmers (rednecks) equally struggling from the financial hardship of the war were starting to be blended in reference to the poor blacks by Carpetbaggers, big corporations, wealthy southerners, some blacks and other prominent groups of the Reconstruction Era. The reference "redneck" became very derogatory and slanderous. The Celtic descendants lashed back in their typical physical fashion, but mostly at the blacks.
The onset of movies and national media often portrayed rednecks very derogatorily. While some of this portrayal was down-right grotesque, the poverty was very real. With the military call-to-arms of WWI, persons from across the USA met these natural volunteers ("rednecks") and found out first hand that they were very poor, and less educated, which led to belief in all the media portrayal (grotesque included), and further solidified our modern day impression/definition of the word redneck.
Mirriam-Webster online defines the term redneck as meaning: 1. *sometimes disparaging* a white member of the southern rural laboring class. 2. *often disparaging* a person whose behavior and opinions are similar to those attributed to rednecks.
In most recent times, the term redneck has become the subject matter of many jokes, further solidifying the concept of poor, uneducated whites. But likewise, in modern day there are circles where being considered a redneck is worn like a badge of honor and used as an excuse for mischief and fun.
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M$
The use of redneck to designate "a union member" was especially popular during the 1920s and 1930s in the coal-producing regions of southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and western Pennsylvania, where the word came to be specifically applied to a miner who belonged to a union.
The earliest printed uses of the word red-neck in a coal-mining context date from the 1912-1913 Paint and Cabin Creeks strike in southern West Virginia and from the 1913-1914 Trinidad District strike in southern Colorado.
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M$
Hi and welcome @krissi73. I'm another community member who has been around here for a while and I hope you'll be open to a helpful tip.
While this response is interesting, I wanted to note that - as a standard practice - when using a source and cutting and pasting whole sections of text in your answer - members indicate that they are quoting the source by creating a separate section like this:
---Quote---
this is the example text taken directly from the source web site.
---End Quote---
In general Wikipedia is a good place to start research but a less reliable source than most others based on the way information is updated and edited.
Using mostly own words and ensuring that you do quote sources if you decide to cut and past text will create stronger answers and maybe some best answers in the future, mahalo!
For more info and tips check out
http://www.mahalo.com/mahalo-copying-and-pasting-guidelines
http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-get-a-best-answer-on-mahalo
http://www.mahalo.com/mahaloian-of-the-week-protips
The modern use of redneck seems to have started in the 1930's, specifically as a Black American word for the racist, bigoted Southerners that they encountered. It was used but not often in print. During the 1960's, apparently because of the attention of the Civil Rights Movement, the word was frequently used with the same meaning.
At some time in quite recent years poor white Southerners and some other rural folk turned the insult into a general ethnic term, which they made a compliment of sorts. The bigoted part is no longer stressed, and instead the crude, bumpkin lifestyle is made the point.
earliest reference that I actually found 1938:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=iBomAAAAIBAJ&sjid=mP0FAAAAIBAJ&...
More recent usage, and lack thereof:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=iBomAAAAIBAJ&sjid=mP0FAAAAIBAJ&...
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M$
See my reply to your comment on my answer. I really want to refute your reference to 1938 because it is very misleading, but I am not because you qualified it as the earliest reference *you* actually found. Please research more carefully. Thanks.
It is the earliest newspaper reference available. While the OED is very reputable, they are not infallible in their interpretation of what they find. You can't tell what they actually found in this case, nor how local or how specialized it was. They have that 1830 reference about Fayetteville, then an 1891 speech alongside "hayseeds", then the strange reference to swamps in 1904. But when you search the newspapers for examples, it comes up blank until 1938, and then only a few times more until the 60's. Redneck is an easy word to form; but if it was really in use why wasn't it used in the papers and why don't they quote known books?
Looking at the news this morning, I couldn't help be reminded of this Mahalo question.
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You know you're a Redneck when you're from Carolina and wake up charged with this:
http://www.fox19.com/Global/story.asp?S=13471451
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck
http://www.ehow.com/facts_4914199_history-term-redneck.html
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M$
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M$
OED is a reputable source. Still, I think they are misleading in this case. Even though the editors found the word, it seems local or rare at most until much later.
Your the connection with the Scotts Irish is speculation. The miners and the pellegra sufferers are clearly unrelated word meanings, as is another one you may have seen from South Africa.
I agree with Mirriam-Webster about the current general meaning, although it is a bit dated as more and more rednecks are adopting the name for themselves. Lots of insults have taken that path.
I'm sitting here looking at my copy of William Blizzard's "When Miners March", wondering what the heck you folks are talking about.
While you may find scattered isolated references to Presbyterians and Scottish political groups prior to the 1900's, it was the UMWA that first made wide-spread use of the word in the very region it is still popularly used.
Check your American history. Read about the mine wars. Learn about how the UMWA used the term to band together a diverse group of workers under a single label to build purpose and strength.
In my opinion your sources are biased and/or ill informed. You can't believe anything you read on the web without checking up on it. Yes, your answer seems right according to those sources, but one is a festival intro, one is a blog, and one is just a comment to a blog.
By checking the newspaper archives, it is clear this word did not come into use at all until the 1930's and rarely then. It seems to have been a Black term for the racist bigots they encountered in the South. It became much more widespread in the 60's, presumably because of the Civil Rights Movement. In recent years the sort of people who wave the Confederate Battle Flag seem to have decided it's a compliment.
It definitely did not go mainstream until the '60s. I base this on searches through Google's archive of old newspapers. That and similar tools will revolutionize etymology, at least for relatively modern American words.
Another source:
http://dictionary.sensagent.com/redneck/en-en/
You did not negate my reference to Mirriam-Webster (cited above). I'll add the Oxford English Dictionary which reads:
"3. orig. N. Amer. (usu. derogatory). Originally: a poorly educated white person working as an agricultural labourer or from a rural area in the southern United States, typically considered as holding bigoted or reactionary attitudes. Now also more generally: any unsophisticated or poorly educated person, esp. one holding bigoted or reactionary attitudes.
Quot. 1830 may represent a more specialized use.
1830 A. ROYALL Southern Tour I. 148 This may be ascribed to the Red Necks, a name bestowed upon the Presbyterians in Fayetteville. 1891 in Amer. Speech 76 435 Primary on the 25th. And the ‘rednecks’ will be there... And the ‘hayseeds’,..they'll be there, too. 1904 Dial. Notes 2 420 Redneck, an uncouth countryman. ‘The hill-billies came from the hills, and the rednecks from the swamps.’ 1913 J. DAVIS Life & Speeches iii. 42 If you red-necks or hill billies ever come to Little Rock be sure and come to see me come to my house."
The question was..."What is the history of the term Redneck." It has a history that dates back to pre-1830. 1830 represents the date it was first recorded in writing (that we know of). The history includes reference to farmers and miners. The word was used in multiple references and on a "mainstream" basis in the south after the Civil War and fully mainstream throughout the USA by the 1930s (post WWI and during the WWII period when "rednecks" were met face-to-face by other enlistees).
Here's another site that substantiates the fighting spirit, southern locale, and Presbyterian inclination of the 1700s Scot-Irish (aka Red Necks).
http://www.theulsterscots.com/
Agreed, localized to the south until the 1900s when it went mainstream. That is the word's history and how I described it.
The question asked about history, which is nebulous at best. (Just think how politicians "spin" modern day events so that even 1 hour old history is convoluted.) History is putting 2 + 2 together - it is deductive reasoning by necessity. Even something in writing can be entirely mis-interpreted if the context in which it was scribed is unknown. None-the-less, it is not difficult, bias or unreliable to draw direct correlations between immigrant populations, their unique sociological attributes and how those attributes contribute to evolution of language.
I am using mainstream to express that the awareness of the word went from local to across the USA, and maintained an unofficial but essentially constant definition at the time of poor, uneducated, rural, southern person. This started during the Reconstruction Era when Northerners descended upon the South and further expanded in WWI and WWII when servicemen from all over the country were grouped together in barracks and got to see first hand how diverse the inhabitants of different regions of this nation were, facilitated by the onset of film and broadcast media, which portrayed these attributes in characters even if the slang name was not specifically in the script. Mainstream in this case does not mean common use, but broad knowledge. Consider the words "valise" or "divan." They are known by many across the country as suitcase or sofa respectively even though you will probably find the words rarely appear in newspapers or every-day discussion, but certain pictures of sofas will make some think the word "divan" versus "large, low, ornate sofa" just as certain character portrayals in early movies would make some think the word "redneck" versus "poor, uneducated, rural, southern person."
The above only reflects one definitive use of the word. There was likewise a very real coal-mine related uprising where redneck related to coal miners, and another definition related to racist as the slander of being considered "white trash aka no better than ex-black slaves" prompted some poor whites to take their frustrations out on blacks to "prove" they were better. (Sad, but not an unheard of sociological display of prowess.)