This is SideDore, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX, I'm Lizzie Peabody.

Chuck Keeney would tell you he comes from a long line of coal mining red necks, and he's

heard all the stereotypes. Chuck Keeney is a West Virginia historian, but he says red

neck history is the history of labor unions everywhere. That's because it traces back

to the red bandanas worn by workers who risked their lives for better working conditions.

I always say that the red bandana is a scarlet thread throughout West Virginia history, and

he got back to 1877 actually in the railroad strike, the first nationwide strike in American

history which started in West Virginia. You had railroad workers that began wearing

red bandanas around their necks, and so they were called red necks.

Oh, wow. Yeah. It's come to mean something totally different now.

That's exactly right. It means something totally different. The reason that it means something

totally different now is because the miners didn't control the narrative. The coal industry

controlled the narrative.

Keeney says there's always been a power struggle between union workers and the state's largest

industry, coal mining. When coal miners put on red bandanas to protest low pay, got angry

that their working conditions were unsafe and yelled at bosses who ignored their demands.

Coal companies said it was just the uncivilized nature of the drunken hill folk that made

up their workforce.

And therefore the term red neck becomes to be associated with someone that is backward,

uncivilized, et cetera, et cetera. So you create the stereotype in order to say these

people are being violent because this is a part of their nature. It's not because of

the industrial system that is keeping them in chains.

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