Red Necks and Red Bandanas: Appalachian Coal Miners and the Coloring of Union Identity, 1912-1936

Western Folklore, Winter 2006 by Huber, Patrick

The soldiers jumped us in the wire fence corner;

They did not know that we had these guns.

And the red-necked miners mowed down these troopers,

You should have seen those poor boys run (Greenway 1959, 19).

In redefining the epithet redneck into a term of union pride, union miners fashioned one of the common pieces of their traditional clothing, the red handkerchief, into an important marker of union loyalty and solidarity. The red bandana is one of the oldest symbols of the labor movement in both the United States and Europe, and such neckerchiefs have long served as a form of protection for railroad men, miners, roughnecks, cowboys, loggers, and other American workingmen. For example, locomotive firemen who worked in the cabs near the coalfueled steam engines often wore such handkerchiefs in order to keep red-hot cinders from falling into their shirts. Coal miners likewise often wore the kerchiefs for the purpose of keeping the gritty coal dust off their necks, from falling down their workshirts, and out of their noses and mouths (Green 1997:2; Green 1991).

But for union miners, the red handkerchief transcended its mere utilitarian purposes to become an emblem of union identity that elevated class and occupational grievances over racial and ethnic divisions. Union miners cleverly adapted the red bandana, a preexisting symbol of their work, to unite miners of various races and ethnicities. During the 1910s and 1920s, a period of intense union organizing and labor strife in northern and central Appalachian coalfields, striking native-born and immigrant union miners occasionally tied red handkerchiefs around their necks or arms so that fellow union men from nearby mines could readily identify them. In fact, the UMW sometimes even distributed these handkerchiefs to miners during strikes.3 This visual identification marker was critical during shoot-outs with company guards, sheriffs deputies, and state militias, when it was vital for one's survival to distinguish friend from foe. During the famous 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain in southern West Virginia, for example, a rag-tag army consisting of an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 UMW miners fought a weeklong labor war against an entrenched army of two thousand sheriffs deputies, company guards, and state militia, before federal troops restored order. Also called "the Red Neck War," this uprising ranks as the largest armed insurrection in American labor history, and during it, thousands of union miners in the "Red Neck army" wore blue bib overalls and red kerchiefs, provided by the UMW, knotted around their necks as their unofficial uniform, while the opposing side distinguished themselves by wearing white neckerchiefs and armbands (Blankenhorn, 1921:288; Phillips 1974:58, 90; Corbin 1981:195, 219; Meador 1981:44, 47, 49; Savage 1986:59, 119; Williams 2005). It remains unclear to what extent black union miners joined their white counterparts in calling themselves "rednecks," particularly given the word's other negative racial associations during the era. Certainly some of the estimated 3,750 to 5,000 African-American miners who participated in this conflict chose to wear red handkerchiefs as a part of their strike uniform, if only for practical, safety purposes. Thus, the red bandana not only protected miners underground from the hazards of coal dust, but also marked, both above and below ground, a group identity and consciousness-another form of protection (Green 1991).