I've been called a hillbilly many times, simply because I grew up in Kentucky. I might add, I lived on the Tennessee state line, all the way to the westernmost county in Kentucky and along the Mississippi River, far from the hills of Eastern Kentucky. After living almost fifty years in the East, I am returning to the mid-south, in Mississippi, just south of Memphis. Some of my earliest and most fond memories are of Reelfoot Lake in Western Tennessee.
Do you think this qualifies me to conclude that the term hillbilly is and was used as a perjoritive?
Hillbilly is and was used by ignorant people as a pejorative.
And you said hillbilly was "...another perjorative (sic)...."