Quiz Question on Dixie Dean

[John Simkin]

It has been claimed that Dixie Dean was the best ever striker to play in England. In the 1927-28 season he scored 60 league goals. It is a record that is unlikely to be broken. Did you know that he hated being called "Dixie" and that you were likely to get a punch in the face if you used the term in his company. Do you know why?

[Guest]

It has been claimed that Dixie Dean was the best ever striker to play in England. In the 1927-28 season he scored 60 league goals. It is a record that is unlikely to be broken. Did you know that he hated being called "Dixie" and that you were likely to get a punch in the face if you used the term in his company. Do you know why?

"His nickname "Dixie" is said to have been given to him by fans due to his dark complexion and curly black hair, which was, in their perception, similar to that of African-Americans in the Southern United States. Dean himself deeply disliked the moniker, preferring to be known as Bill."

[John Simkin]

It has been claimed that Dixie Dean was the best ever striker to play in England. In the 1927-28 season he scored 60 league goals. It is a record that is unlikely to be broken. Did you know that he hated being called "Dixie" and that you were likely to get a punch in the face if you used the term in his company. Do you know why?

"His nickname "Dixie" is said to have been given to him by fans due to his dark complexion and curly black hair, which was, in their perception, similar to that of African-Americans in the Southern United States. Dean himself deeply disliked the moniker, preferring to be known as Bill."

As you say "Dixie" was a reference to his dark complexion and curly black hair. Dean hated being called "Dixie" and insisted that his friends and acquaintances used his real name. His biographer, Nick Walsh, argues in Dixie Dean: The Official Biography of a Goalscoring Legend (1977) that Dean felt that the term "had connections with colour problems connected with the Southern states of America, and therefore contained an inference that he was of that origin, or half-caste."

Rival fans used to make racial comments against Dean. In 1938 he was leaving the pitch after a game in 1938 when a spectator called out: "We will get you yet, you black bastard." Dean went into the crowd and punched him in the face. A policeman came running over but instead of arresting him, shook him by the hand.

Here is a cigarette card published in 1927 that Dean was rather upset with. Youi can see from the other photographs of Dean that the drawing provides an inaccurate portrait of the man.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FdeanD.htm