Sadie Hawkins Day

The original Sadie Hawkins Day was in a comic strip called Li'l Abner, which ran from the 1930's to the 50's. I (Mrs. Yelverton) always loved to find it in the Sunday papers. It is very un-PC, depicting life in a village called Dogpatch in Appalachia.

I found s link to a (bad) copy of an old cartoon about the history of the Sadie Hawkins Race. In it you can see Li'l Abner being trained by his parents, Mammy and Pappy Yokum, to outrun the beautiful Daisie May in the important race. If a girl catches a guy during the race, they get married immediately on the spot.
In the beginning his mother shows him a scrapbook of the history of the race, and the first - rather plain - Sadie Hawkins.