Iconic band The Dixie Chicks change 'racist' name

The Dixie Chicks are changing their name amid the push for anti-racism as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The iconic country music trio are dropping the term ‘Dixie’ from their title over what have been called racist connotations and ties to the slavery-era southern states of America.

The Mason-Dixon line was a geographical marker that separated the ‘free states’, those that didn’t allow human slavery, from the southern states that allowed slaves until the Civil War saw an end to the slave trade in the United States.

The Dixie Chicks become The Chicks

Now the 13-time Grammy-winning group, consisting of lead singer Natalie Maines and sisters Martie Erwin Maguire and Emily Strayer, have announced they will be giving up the name, and will simply be The Chicks going forwards.

The major change was announced when the group dropped a new single, March March, under the new name, and later confirmed their decision to the New York Times, and including a short statement on their website.

"We want to meet this moment," they wrote.

The country group are no strangers to political controversy, with their vocal opposition to the Iraq war in 2003 seeing them widely criticised, and in some cases even ostracised by fans and the music community.

Calls to confront dark southern history

It’s a move that responds to the call to stop romanticising a very dark southern history of slave ownership and atrocities.

It saw pop-country group Lady Antebellum change their name to Lady A earlier this month, though the move backfired as the decision undermined the success of an existing Lady A blues musician who saw her music’s visibility all but vanish when the major group took the name.

The Chicks avoided the same mistake by getting permission to use ‘The Chicks’ off existing New Zealand duo Suzanne Lynch and Judy Hindman, who have been going by The Chicks since the 1960s.

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