The premise led to a cliffhanger strip that ran on November 15, 1937, kicking off a storyline that would continue for years about a “strange mountain custom—Sadie Hawkins Day.”
In “Li’l Abner,” Capp described Sadie Hawkins as “the homeliest gal in all them hills,” desperate for a husband. So her father, Dogpatch Mayor Hekzebiah Hawkins, created a town race so she could chase the town’s bachelors. The men got a head start, and any man Sadie caught before sundown was obligated to marry her. After she caught one, the chase became an annual November custom for other young ladies in Dogpatch.
How did readers react?
The Sadie Hawkins storyline was a huge hit with readers, according to Schumacher and Kitchen. “These were days long before women’s liberation, when custom largely dictated that a woman should passively wait for a man to express interest in her; the idea of turning the tables on the men was enormously appealing,” they write. “Letters poured in, with readers demanding to know about the Dogpatch festivities.”
When did it become a campus craze?
The next year, Schumacher and Kitchen write, the University of Tennessee held an event “in which students, dressed up like Li’l Abner characters, participated in a foot race, and if a coed caught a young man, he was obliged to take her to the newly minted Sadie Hawkins dance.”
By 1939, the authors add, 201 colleges in 188 cities celebrated Sadie Hawkins Day, with the trend also spreading to high schools and church groups. According to Schumacher and Kitchen, United Feature Syndicate, the company that syndicated “Li’l Abner” to newspapers around the country, recognized the idea's marketing possibilities, offering Sadie Hawkins kits and handouts suggesting ways of making the parties more successful.
In its February 6, 1939, issue, LIFE magazine covered a January celebration at a Wyoming university, calling the day a growing “minor national holiday” and describing how “a girl pinned a card on the boy she caught, claimed him as her escort of that night’s dance. Everyone dressed as Li’l Abner characters for the dance and costume prizes were awarded.”
Two years later, LIFE again reported on Sadie Hawkins Day, this time at the University of North Carolina, noting that “all over America 500 schools, colleges, clubs and Army camps were commemorating the day.”
Does it have a set date?
The “Li’l Abner” strip revisited the Sadie Hawkins race each November, until Daisy Mae finally caught Abner in 1952.
“It has become a national holiday,” Capp wrote in the March 31, 1952, issue of LIFE. “It’s my responsibility. It doesn’t happen on any set day in November; it happens on the day I say it happens. I get tens of thousands of letters from colleges, communities and church groups, starting around July, asking me what day, so they can make plans.”
Today, some calendars recognize November 13 as national Sadie Hawkins Day. While the idea of a girl asking a boy to a dance is no longer a novelty—or the only option—many schools still hold the events, although they’re now sometimes referred to as a more gender-neutral “ask anyone dance,” “turnabout dance” or “MORP” (prom spelled backward).
