linthead
n.— «Almost always it features early on the fact that his mother’s family worked in Revolution Mill in Greensboro, that because of his grandmother’s asthma his family moved into the McAdoo Heights neighborhood and his mother switched from the mill school to the city school system. There, he recounts, she was teased as a “linthead,” a derogatory term for mill workers.» —“Neal takes campaign one voter at a time” by Mark Binker News & Record (Greensboro, North Carolina) Mar. 30, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...
Jameela in Charlotte, North Carolina, says her family refers to their television’s remote control as the clicker, but her friends insist on calling it the remote. These devices go by other names as well, including doofer, flicker, zapper, and...
I grew up in nearby Burlington, NC and mill workers were called “lint dodgers”. Depending on who said it to whom, it was either an inside joke type of thing or a derogarty thing.
I grew up and still live in Kannapolis, NC, a former mill town. I heard the term “linthead” from my father and other former mill workers, and it was mostly considered a derogatory term – or, as Jeff mentions above, an inside sort of joke.