Y’all! The Bitter Southerner has published an exclusive excerpt from Rednecks (out 5/14/24) in their new issue! The prologue and first two chapters are available at the link below, and you can subscribe for this gorgeous print version.
BitterSoutherner.com
A little background: Many years ago, I was leaning in the office door of my friend, mentor, and freelance editor, Jason Frye — a native son of Logan County, WV. Somehow the term “redneck” came up.
“You know where that word comes from?” asked Jason.
I touched the back of my neck. “Sunburn, from working in the fields.”
Jason’s eyes sparked over his great iron-shot beard and he leaned toward me, rubbing his hands together. “Boy, you don’t know the half of it.”
So began my long personal journey into the history of the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed uprising since the Civil War. In 1921, ten thousand coal miners rebelled against the coal companies, which had been using an army of private detectives (“gun thugs”) to keep the miners from unionizing. A million rounds were fired, bombs were dropped on American soil, and only the arrival of the United States Army stopped the violence. The miners wore red bandannas tied around their necks, and people called them “rednecks.”
To quote the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum:
“Although the term ‘redneck’ predates the Mine Wars era, this period is often understood as the birth of the term as slang in America. It was originally used in the popular media to denigrate an Appalachian working class uprising as backwards, uneducated, and dangerous, and the stereotype and negative use of the term persists today.”
Shortly after I began a deep dive into Mine Wars history, I wrote a short story for The Bitter Southerner that was published in 2018. Six years later, I’m so damn excited to share this excerpt of the novel with y’all…and the whole thing when it comes out in May. Talk about full circle!
