When did the practice of "tying a yellow ribbon" originate to welcome home loved ones?

Question

It is, as far as I'm aware, unknown in the UK. We only know it from a hit record by Dawn in 1971 but it must go back further than that. Any info on this custom please.

Answer 1

It began as a folk tale or legend. Here it is in the earliest version I've found:

It is the story of two men in a railroad train. One was so reserved that his companion had difficulty in persuading him to talk about himself. He was, he said at length, a convict returning from five years' imprisonment in a distant prison, but his people were too poor to visit him and were too uneducated to be very articulate on paper. Hence he had written to them to make a sign for him when he was released and came home. If they wanted him, they should put a white ribbon in the big apple tree which stood close to the railroad track at the bottom of the garden, and he would get off the train, but if they did not want him, they were to do nothing and he would stay on the train and seek a new life elsewhere. He said that they were nearing his home town and that he couldn't bear to look. His new friend said that he would look and took his place by the window to watch for the apple tree which the other had described to him.

In a minute he put a hand on his companion's arm. "There it is," he cried. "It's all right! The whole tree is white with
ribbons."

That passage comes from a 1959 book on prison reform. The title is Star Wormwood, and it was written by the eminent Pennsylvania jurist Curtis Bok. Bok says it was told to him by Kenyon J. Scudder, first superintendent of Chino penitentiary.

During the 1960s, the returning prisoner story appeared in religious publications and circulated in oral tradition among young people active in church groups. In this environment, both the versions that appeared in print and those collected from oral tradition highlighted similarities to the New Testament "Parable of the Prodigal Son."

In October of 1971, Pete Hamill wrote a piece for the New York Post called "Going Home." In it, college students on a bus trip to the beaches of Fort Lauderdale make friends with an ex-convict who is watching for a yellow handkerchief on a roadside oak. Hamill claimed to have heard this story in oral tradition.

In June of 1972, nine months later, The Readers Digest reprinted "Going Home." Also in June 1972, ABC-TV aired a dramatized version of it in which James Earl Jones played the role of the returning ex-con.

One month-and-a-half after that, Irwin Levine and L. Russell Brown registered for copyright a song they called "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree." The authors said they heard the story while serving in the military. Pete Hamill was not convinced and filed suit for infringement.

One factor that may have influenced Hamill's decision to do so was that, in May 1973, "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" sold 3 million records in three weeks. When the dust settled, BMI calculated that radio stations had played it 3 million times--that's seventeen continuous years of airplay. Hamill dropped his suit after folklorists working for Levine and Brown turned up archival versions of the story that had been collected before "Going Home" had been written.

In January 1975, Gail Magruder, wife of Jeb Stuart Magruder of Watergate fame, festooned her front porch with yellow ribbons to welcome her husband home from jail. The event was televised on the evening news (one of the viewers was Penne Laingen). And thus a modern folk legend concerning a newly released prisoner was transformed into a popular song, and the popular song, in turn, transformed into a ritual enactment.

Answer 2

When Tony Orlando and Dawn sang the song..Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree

Answer 3

In October of 1971, newspaper columnist Pete Hamill wrote a piece for the New York Post called "Going Home." In it, college students on a bus trip to the beaches of Fort Lauderdale make friends with an ex-convict who is watching for a yellow handkerchief on a roadside oak. Hamill claimed to have heard this story in oral tradition.

In June of 1972, nine months later, Reader's Digest reprinted "Going Home." Also in June 1972, ABC-TV aired a dramatized version of it in which James Earl Jones played the role of the returning ex-con. A month-and-a-half after that, Irwin Levine and L. Russell Brown registered for copyright a song they called "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree." The authors said they heard the story while serving in the military. Pete Hamill was not convinced and filed suit for infringement.

One factor that may have influenced Hamill's decision to do so was that, in May 1973, "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" sold 3 million records in three weeks. When the dust settled, BMI calculated that radio stations had played it 3 million times--that's seventeen continuous years of airplay. Hammill dropped his suit after folklorists working for Levine and Brown turned up archival versions of the story that had been collected before "Going Home" had been written. [1]

Answer 4

I understand the question. But this is all there was on Wikipedia "The symbol of a Yellow Ribbon became widely known in civilian life in the 1970s as a reminder of an absent loved one, either in the military or in jail that they would be welcome home on their return." I presume it must have been the in thing to do in the seventies and no other time period, although I agree it must originate somewhere. Let me know if you find out, because you've baffled me.

Answer 5

As American men and women continue to lay down their lives every day in the war with Iraq, yellow ribbons can be seen popping up like spring posies in towns and cities all across the United States, a phenomenon many will recall from the Gulf War of 1991, when similar decorations adorned tree trunks, front doors and lapel pins until the troops came home from the battlefield. At its broadest, the gesture signifies home-front support for American military personnel and the war effort in general; at its most personal, it signifies the hope that a loved one participating in the distant conflict will return safe and sound. In any case, "tying a yellow ribbon" has become such a ubiquitous and familiar symbolic act that many people assume its origins to be quite old, though folklorists say the history of the practice as we know it stretches back little more than 20 years.

According to one popular misconception -- evidently a by-product of the 1949 John Wayne film "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," in which the female lead did just that to express her undying love for a cavalry officer -- the custom originated during or just after the American Civil War. But even though the motif of that film, not to mention its title and theme song, derived from a folk ballad dating back hundreds of years in different versions, there is no historical evidence that Americans of the Civil War period (or any period since, through the mid-20th century) actually wore yellow ribbons to express such sentiments.

The fact is, according to research published by the late Gerald E. Parsons, longtime librarian of the Folklife Reading Room of the Library of Congress, the custom didn't exist at all before 1980, when the idea of displaying yellow ribbons in honor of the 52 Americans held hostage by Iranian militants seemingly emerged from nowhere and took the country by storm -- a tribute said to be indirectly inspired by the popular song "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree," composed in 1972, which in turn was inspired by an oral folktale circulating since the 1950s (for the particulars, see Parsons' essay: "Yellow Ribbons: Ties with Tradition").

Granted, the lyrics of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon," not to mention the folktale on which they were based, tell the story of a paroled convict's prospective homecoming, not that of a soldier stationed overseas. Similarly, the Iran hostage crisis involved civilians held captive on foreign soil as opposed to military personnel in combat. But once the basic connection had been drawn between the plight of Americans endangered in conflicts abroad and displaying yellow ribbons as a form of tribute, the stage was set for a fresh application -- first in 1991 to the troops who fought in the Gulf War, and now, 12 years later, to U.S. forces sent back to the region to effect a "regime change."

The very fact that this shift took place, argued Gerald Parsons, lends the yellow ribbon weight as a folk tradition in spite of its brief historical lifespan. "Ultimately," he wrote, "the thing that makes the yellow ribbon a genuinely traditional symbol is neither its age nor its putative association with the American Civil War, but rather its capacity to take on new meanings, to fit new needs and, in a word, to evolve."

Answer 6

It began with the return of the American embassy hostages in Iran. One of the women that was held hostage was photographed wearing a yellow ribbon in her hair. As a show of support for the hostages, people started wearing yellow ribbons and tying yellow ribbons around trees in their front yards. It has become a tradition this country ever since as a show of support for the military and for hostages. It is just something that caught on---there was no organized effort to start it.

Answer 7

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Answer 8

I think it's from the song...

Answer 9

i think it was ww2.