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

Western Folklore, Winter 2006 by Huber, Patrick

They say in Harlan County

There are no neutrals there;

You'll either be a union man

Or a thug for J. H. Blair.

(chorus)

Which side are you on?

Which side are you on? (rebeat)

Oh, workers, can you stand it?

Oh tell me how you can.

Will you be a lousy scab,

Or will you be a man? (Fowke and Glazer 1960:54-55)

For union miners, regardless of race or ethnicity, being called a redneck reinforced their sense of upholding traditionally masculine values, unlike the much-hated, even effeminate, scabs.

In a 1935 American Speech article, David W. Maurer confirmed the success of the union coal miners' efforts to rehabilitate the epithet redneck into a badge of working-class solidarity and pride, reporting that one of the contemporary definitions of the term was a person "who belongs to a labor union or sympathizes with union men in a strike (19). Indeed, one Harlan County taxi driver who sympathized with the National Miners Union told novelist John Dos Passos, one of the members of Dreiser's group, in 1931, "[My] neck got so red this summer I reckon its about ready to turn brown" (Harlan Miners Speak 1932, 293). One can interpret his statement simply and straightforwardly as a commonplace and insignificant comment on his sunburn. But given what we know about the usage of redneck in eastern Kentucky during the early thirties, the statement indicates a political declaration of working-class allegiance.

THE LIMITS OF REDNECK UNIONISM

The history of the term redneck in the racially and ethnically diverse coalfields of early twentieth-century northern and central Appalachia suggests the potential that existed for multiracial unionism, and at the same time demonstrates once again that words are a powerful force in fostering occupational identities and class consciousness. Despite the heterogeneous composition of the coal mining industry's workforce, the United Mine Workers enjoyed a remarkable degree of success in organizing "mixed" unions of black, white, and immigrant miners in southern West Virginia in the early 1920s. In March 1921, for example, a miner from Mount Claire reported to the United Mine Workers Journal that "we have 150 miners in our local and among them are white and Negro Americans, Horvats, Hungarians, Slavs, Croatians, Italians. We get along well in our local for having so many nationalities and races represented in our membership" (Corbin 1981:77). Later that year, the white president of another one of the state's UMW locals sent an enthusiastic letter to the journal recounting the union's interracial solidarity during a recent successful strike. "So brothers," he concluded, "you can call [us] . . . Negroes, or whites or mixed. I call it a dam solid mass of different colors and tribes blended together, woven, bound, interlocked, tongued and grooved and glued together in one body" (Corbin 1981:77).

Confronted with the red-baiting and racially divisive tactics practiced by coal operators, local and state officials, and strikebreakers, organized miners in West Virginia and Kentucky reacted pragmatically by redefining the epithet redneck rather than ignoring it or seeking to replace it. Often illiterate and with little formal education, miners clearly recognized the power of spoken words and songs in their daily lives (Huber 1992:140-42). They appropriated and redefined language in their union struggles because the spoken word was one of just a few devices available to them-short of rifles and brickbats-with which they could defend their distinctive working-class institutions and folkways. And their pointed redefinition of redneck to mean a proud and defiant "union man" signaled an emerging sense of class consciousness, occupational resistance, and multiracial solidarity. In effect, their reformulation of the term sought to counter the coal companies' anti-union tactics and to foster class solidarity among white, black, and immigrant miners, beginning at the basic level of language.