I saw on the History Channel..."Originally, there were black and white rednecks." When did this all change?

Question

Ding!

Ross wins.

As usual, it was a Newspaper man that came up with the catchy phrase.

There were groups of black West Virginia coal miners that fought in the Matewan County War, and the Battle of Blair Mountain.

Answer 1

The term "redneck" is a term that historians are in disagreement as to how it was derived. The popular version comes , like stated above, from the farmers and laborers who worked out of doors and literally had a red neck from the sun. Another version comes from a series of feuds and skirmishes in the mountains of West Virginia in the early 1900's between labor unionists and those who wanted to unionize against the mining establishment and owners and those who were anti-union. The pro-union element wore red bandanas around their necks, thus being called "rednecks". They were all white, laborers and working poor, which has long been the conotation when one thinks of rednecks. Depending upon which version you choose to believe, people of all ethnicity could be considered "rednecks", particularly the first group. This goes back to the term "cowboy" in which many of the first ones (and some of the best ones for that matter) out west were indeed black.

Answer 2

Red neck originally just referred to those that worked outside for a living...typically farmers.

Blacks and whites fit this description.

Later it came to mean backward people, still commonly rural, and possibly racist.

Answer 3

It didn't. Redneck is a state of mind and they can be found anywhere in the world.

Answer 4

When colour film came into existance.

Answer 5

I don't know the answer, but I would recomend that you believe ross4thu... he seems to know what he's talking about.