GREENSBORO, N.C. — There's a battle brewing in Winston-Salem over the name of the state's second largest fair. Some say the word "Dixie" needs to be removed from Dixie Classic Fair.
According to History.com, there are multiple ways the word "Dixie" became affiliated with the south.
The most straightforward explanation is the Mason-Dixon Line. Back in 1767 Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon settled a dispute about the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland by drawing a line between the two states. "Dixie" may have started as slang for everything south of Dixon's line.
Another theory claims before the civil war, the State's Citizen's Bank of New Orleans issued ten dollar notes with the French word for ten, "dix" written on one side. The bills became known as dixies. And eventually a nickname for Louisiana and then the entire south.
What we do know is that there is a minstrel song called "Dixie" It included that famous chorus "Away away away down south in Dixie." Abraham Lincoln actually called it one of the best songs he'd ever heard. And It became a de-facto national anthem for the Confederacy during the civil war.
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