Redneck - Etymology - Encyclopedia II

The word redneck was first cited in Scotland. In Scotland, the National Covenant and The Solemn League and Covenant (a.k.a. Covenanters) signed documents stating that Scotland desired a Presbyterian Church Government, and rejected the Church of England as their official church. Many of the Covenanters signed these documents using their own blood, and many in the movement began wearing red pieces of cloth around their neck to signify their position to the public. They were referred to as Rednecks. These Scottish Presbyterians migrated from their lowland Scottish home to Ulster (the northern province of Ireland) during the 17th Century and soon settled in considerable numbers in North America across the 18th Century. Some immigrated directly from Scotland to the American colonies in the late 18th and early 19th-centuries as a result of the Lowland Clearances. One etymological theory holds that since many Scots-Irish Americans who settled in Appalachia and the South were Presbyterian, the term was bestowed upon them and their descendants.

The popular etymology says that the term derives from such individuals having a red neck caused by working outdoors in the sunlight over the course of their lifetime. The effect of decades of direct sunlight on the exposed skin of the back of the neck not only reddens fair skin, but renders it leathery and tough, and typically very wrinkled and spotted by late middle age. Similarly, some historians claim that the term redneck originated in 17th-Century Virginia, because indentured servants were sunburnt while tending plantation crops.

It is clear that by the post-Reconstruction era (after the departure of Federal troops in the American South in 1874-1878), the term had worked its way into popular usage. Several 'black-face' minstrel shows used the word in a derogatory manner, comparing slave life over that of the poor rural whites. This may have much to do with the social, political and economic struggle between Populists, the Redeemers, and Republican Carpetbaggers of the post-Civil War South and Appalachia, where the new middle class of the South (professionals, bankers, industrialists) displaced the antebellum planter class as the leaders of the Southern states. The Populist movement, with its pseudo-socialist message of economic equality, represented a threat to the status quo. The use of a derogative term, such as 'redneck' to belittle the working class, would have assisted in the gradual disenfranchisement of most of the Southern lower class, both black and white, which occurred by 1910.

Another popular theory stems from the use of red bandanas tied around the neck to signify union affiliation during the violent clashes between United Mine Workers and owners between 1910 and 1920.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Etymology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page