Three white, cotton sharecroppers in Hale County, Alabama, 1936. Black and white photo of three men in working clothes, sitting in front of a building. The men are Frank Tengle, Bud Fields, and Floyd Burroughs.
24 September 2021
Redneck is a derogatory term for a poor, poorly educated, white person from the southern United States, often employed in agricultural or other menial labor. Bigotry and reactionary political views are often associated with them. In more recent usage, redneck has been applied to any poorly educated person, especially a bigot, but not necessarily from the southern US.
Like other slurs, the term is not necessarily offensive when used as an in-group term among white, American Southerners. The comedy of Jeff Foxworthy and his you might be a redneck if... schtick is a case in point.
The underlying metaphor is uncertain. It most likely refers to having a sunburned neck, from working in the fields. But it could also be a reference to habitual anger, or even to pellagra, a disease caused by niacin (vitamin B3) deficiency that can cause red, blotchy skin, especially on skin that has been exposed to sunlight.
Redneck appears in the nineteenth century, but exactly when is a matter of some debate. The earliest known possible use of the term is from Anne Royall’s 1830 travelogue of the American South, in which she says Red Neck is a term applied to Presbyterians in Fayetteville, North Carolina:
Fayetteville was a lively, flourishing town, possessing many advantages, settled principally by a noble race of Scotch tories. I believe, however this may have been, matters have turned round, and the Scotch descendants are liberal, learned, and gene- rous, and the then Whigs and descendants of Scot's servants, are now a noble race of Hen-pecked Husbands, alias good Loyal subjects of Church and State. Liberty no longer shows its head in Fayetteville. It is in vain, as it would be criminal to conceal the fact, that the Presbyterians are more powerful here, than any point north of it, excepting Virginia. They have gone wisely to work in the outset, and have selected all those places in our country, which promise commerce and wealth, and after subverting the plans of Education, and the relation of even man and wife, they got complete control over the Schools; and through the women the purse, and also the commercial business.
Briefly, Fayetteville is the poorest hole I ever was in. I did not find more than a dozen liberal minded men in the whole, a population of 3 to 4,000 inhabitants [....]
Capt. John Kerney is a tall, slender, engaging figure, with a lively black eye and handsome features. But a minute description of all those who called would fill my volume, and it must astonish every one, after what I have said, (which is certainly no more than justice,) that I received but one dollar in Fayetteville! This may be ascribed to the Red Necks, a name bestowed upon the Presbyterians in Fayetteville. How many names these people have, matters not, they still gather money; you cannot shame them!
I have elided a long section that gives detailed descriptions of individual residents.
Most dictionaries, Merriam-Webster being an exception, caveat this 1830 use as perhaps being a specialized, local sense, distinct from the more general sense. One can certainly conclude that looking only at a snippet containing the word. But if one looks at the larger context, which I give here, it may be that it was Royall who misinterpreted the term as being specific to Fayetteville. Certainly, the political views and lack of education she describes fits the present-day definition, and while the Presbyterians she writes of are relatively wealthy, compared to their neighbors, the entire town is poor in an absolute sense.
Other dictionaries have at least a half-century gap between this 1830 instance and the next recorded instance, which would cause one to think the earlier citation may be an independent coinage, but there are interdatings to be found and that show that redneck was used more generally than Royall supposed. A letter, dated 30 May 1837, published in the Hartford, Connecticut Times has this:
There’s one Hansel somebody, from Sharon, that tries it forty times a day, and gits up and shets his eyes and draws down his face and looks like an ampersand thats cotched the delirion dremus, and sez he aynt no partee man, and cant in conshence go with neither party; but when he starts off he goes like a sturgeon with one eye knocked out, tryin to swim strate in the middle ov the channel; but he gits sich a skew afore he swims two rods that he runs smash amongst the fedrels and they pat his hed and call him a real red neck what aynt afraid to go jist where he plezes.
There is this report from 4 October 1860, published in the Macon Telegraph five days later about a Baltimore, Maryland street gang known as the Red Necks. This is not the classic view of a redneck, but it fits the description of poor, poorly educated, white person from the south (Baltimore is often considered the northernmost “southern” city), prone to anger:
Another notorious outlaw and leader of the Know Nothing clubs, was arrested yesterday for the murder of a German woman, by shooting her. The murder occurred during the last winter, yet no arrest has ever been made of any one for its commission. The man Lynch, who has never been arrested, was the captain of the “Red Necks,” a villianous [sic] Know Nothing club, belonging to Fells Point. It appears that on the night of the murder of the woman, a shot had been fired by an unknown part at a member of the Red Neck club, named Pierce, with fatal effect. So soon as the fact became known to the Red Neck’s [sic], they, (suspecting the deed had been committed by some member of a rival club, called “Double Pumps,”) went in a body to their usual place of meeting, and being armed with pistols and guns, fired into the crowd, wounding several of them by this fire; a woman, who was passing at the time, was fatally wounded and died the same night.
There is this widely syndicated story, first appearing in the Georgia Weekly Telegraph on 24 August 1875, that uses red neck in reference to a person making unwanted advances on the daughter of a woman who runs a boarding house—unwanted from the mother’s perspective; we don’t get the daughter’s view. But here it could just be a physical description, but the fact that a ruddy-colored neck is called out would seem to be significant:
Think of my Jane marrying a man with one eye! and a red neck! and a limp! O-h-h! when I think of that skulking Jaskins sneaking around my innocent Jane to make her his wife, I could t-e-a-r his house down.
And by 1885 we can see redneck is clearly established. From an anti-immigrant screed published in the Daily Honolulu Press on 15 September 1885. Here, the word falls on a line break, so whether or not it would normally have a hyphen is unknown:
There was an element in the Southern United States, which still exists, known to northern people as “poor white trash,” and locally known as “crackers,” “dirt-eaters” and red-necks,” with was a constant reproach, it being thought that slavery caused it and fostered it. The fact is that the ancestors of these peculiar people were imported from the slums of England and Europe in the seventeenth century, by a large land company, free, and were settled on the waters of Pamlico and Albermarle Sounds; and their descendants are unmistakeable to the practiced eye, from the Carolina coast, through Northern Georgia, Central Arkansas and Southern Missouri. They are by far the most worthless class that ever emigrated to the United States, and had it been left entirely to themselves, they would not have emigrated.
Would it not, in the face of all these facts, be well to call a halt in our immigration business, and consider the future?
Sources:
“Baltimore Correspondence” (4 October 1860). Macon Telegraph (Georgia), 9 October 1860, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Both Sides.” Daily Honolulu Press, 15 September 1885, 2. Library of Congress: Chronicling America, Historic American Newspapers.
Dictionary of American Regional English, 2013, s.v. red-neck, n.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. redneck, n.
Letter, 30 May 1837. Times (Hartford, Connecticut), 3 June 1837, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Merriam-Webster, 2021, s.v. redneck, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, modified December 2019, s.v. redneck, n. and adj.
Royall, Anne. Mrs. Royall’s Southern Tour, vol. 1 of 3. Washington, DC: 1830, 148. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“That Sneaking, Skulking Mr. Jaskins” (syndicated). Georgia Weekly Telegraph (Macon, Georgia), 24 August 1875, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Photo credit: Walker Evans, 1936, U.S. Farm Security Administration. Library of Congress. As a work of the U.S. federal government, this image is in the public domain.