re: Lady Antebellum Becomes Woke

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Today I found out the Cincinnati Reds were once renamed the “Redlegs” due to the second “Red Scare”.

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This name stuck until 1953 when the association of the term “Reds” with communism caused the Reds to change their name to the “Redlegs” in order to avoid the social stigma. Further, for a four year stretch from 1956-1960, the name “Reds” was removed from the team’s logo and no longer appeared on the team’s uniforms. Despite the continued use of the changed logo, the name “Cincinnati Reds” was restored after the 1958 season.

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If you’re wondering where the term “Redlegs” came from, this was once a derogatory term used to refer to a specific group of poor white people living on various islands in the Caribbean (generally originally from Ireland and Scotland). They were also commonly known as “white slaves”. Some were in fact actual white slaves, having been taken by press gangs and transported to Barbados to be sold. Others were simply indentured servants, agreeing to work more or less as slaves for a time in exchange for transportation. It’s estimated around 50,000 of these Redlegs were transported from Ireland alone during the mid-17th century.

So, apparently, the Reds preferred to associate themselves with slavery, rather than communism.

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Of course it is, and you're lying to yourself if you say that dress, speech, architecture, culture, etc., hasn't been celebrated in the south for decades.

Like I said, I think the name change is stupid, but sometimes words have more context to them than just their dictionary definition.

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So they've been around 14 years but they just noticed?

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