The U.S. South - interesting facts
The U.S. Southern states or The South, known during the American Civil War era as Dixie, is a distinctive region of the United States with its own unique historical perspective, customs, musical styles, and cuisine. There is some overlap with The Southwest and the Mid-Atlantic States.
As defined by the Census Bureau, the Southern region of the United States includes 16 states, and is split into three smaller units, or divisions: The South Atlantic States, which are Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia (plus the District of Columbia); the East South Central States of Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee; and the West South Central States of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.
The largest city in the region is Houston, Texas. Other important cities include Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Little Rock, Atlanta, Charlotte, Louisville, Jackson, Birmingham, Richmond, Miami, Jacksonville, Ft. Lauderdale, Tampa, and Orlando.
Southern Culture in the 21st Century
As the effects of slavery and racial loyalty disappear, a new regional identity is being carefully crafted under the banner of the aforementioned "New South" through such events as the hip annual Spoleto Music Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, and the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia.
Although the South as a whole defies stereotyping, it is nonetheless known for entrenched political conservatism, for its Calvinist religious fundamentalism, and for feelings of nostalgia toward the old rural South still present in events like Confederate Memorial Day, groups such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and small intellectual movements such as the revisionist "League of the South" and the Southern Agrarians.
Southern American cuisine is still somewhat distinctive. The Southern midday and evening meal tends still to consist of the "meat and three", usually a simple meat preparation such as meat loaf, baked ham, or fried pork chops, and three "vegetables" (a term often stretched to include macaroni and cheese, fried apples, Jello salad, and the like). Vegetables which are truly such are often flavored with lard or other fats and cooked for long periods, far longer than would be customary in other styles of cooking. Beverages of choice include "sweet tea", iced tea which is sweetened with large quantities of sugar while it is being brewed, and various soft drinks, many of which (like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Dr Pepper) had their origins in the South. This diet contains an unhealthy level of fat if consumed regularly, especially by persons with sedentary lifestyles, and is one of the main reasons that the South is associated with obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes being more endemic even than in the rest of North America. Traditional Southern food is often called "soul food" and associated primarily with African-Americans in the rest of the U.S.; in reality there is little difference between the traditional diets of white and black Southerners except that the diets of the latter are more apt to include offal dishes such as chitterlings ("chitlins"). Of course, most Southern cities and even some smaller towns now offer a wide variety of cuisines of other origins such as Chinese, Mexican, and Italian, as well as restaurants still serving primarily or solely Southern specialites. See:Southern U.S. cuisine
The South, probably more than any other industrially advanced society in the world, is highly religious, and politicians and sociologists often refer to it as the "Bible Belt" due to the prevelance of evangelical Protestantism and other conservative Christian faiths being held in predomiance. The Southern conservative seldom identifies with the Democratic Party any longer, and since the Reagan era many have switched loyalties to the Republican Party, in large measure due to its open courting of the evangelical Christian vote, largely rewriting its platform to accommodate the views of this group in a way that is highly unlikely to be emulated by the Democrats. Unlike modern Southern public schools, churches and neighborhoods are still largely segregated voluntarily, especially in rural areas; in some areas affluent suburbs are now largely racially integrated, and a small but increasing number of churches are as well.
Fights over the old "Rebel Flag" of the defunct Confederacy still occur from time to time, and it and other reminders of the Old South can be seen everywhere on automobile bumper-stickers, on t-shirts, and flown from homes. However, these remnants are slowly fading away in urban and suburban areas, and Southern accents are heard ever-less often in the larger growing cities, and the South is clearly merging into the greater commercial culture of the whole United States.
Exceptions and Variations
- Southern Louisiana, having been colonized by France and Spain rather than Great Britain, has a different culture and traditions, especially with the Cajun culture of southwest Louisiana, and the Creole French, Latin American and Caribbean influenced culture of the New Orleans area.
- The Gulf Coast regions of Alabama, Mississippi, and northern Florida also share a similar French/Spanish colonial history, but lack the various other influences present in modern Louisiana.
- Texas was a dependency of New Spain, but was originally claimed for France, became its own "Kingdom of Texas" under the Spanish, then part of Mexico, and lastly the independent Republic of Texas. After being annexed by the United States, it sided with the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. There have been "six flags" over Texas. In many ways Texas has one foot in the South, and one in the Southwest. The major cities, especially Houston, see a very diverse population, especially that of Hispanic- and Asian-Americans.
- Florida has had rapid population growth due to retirees from the North and immigrants from Latin America. Miami, Florida has become more a part of the culture of the Caribbean, with a large influx of immigrants from Cuba, and also Puerto Rico, Haiti and other parts of Latin America, as non-Hispanic whites and native-born African Americans have fled north to find higher wages, lower costs of living, and cultures where they feel more comfortable. While southern and central Florida is seen by many as not truly part of the U.S. South in terms of culture, the areas of northeast Florida and the Panhandle still, for the most part, hold Southern traditions and ways-of-life dear.
- The culture of Northern Kentucky is more Midwestern than Southern as this region is culturally and economically attached to Cincinnati, although the latter was once famously characterized as "combining Southern bigotry with Midwestern uptightness," this quotation most commonly being attributed to H.L. Mencken, though the authenticity of this is not universally accepted. Conversely, Southern Indiana is more Southern than it is Midwestern, as it is culturally and southwestern Indiana is economically attached to Louisville, Kentucky. Similarly, Southern Illinois (Little Egypt) is more Southern than it is Midwestern; it forms a coherent cultural region with the Missouri Bootheel, northeast Arkansas, Kentucky's Purchase, and West Tennessee; indeed, some claim that Interstate 70 is where the cultural "South" actually begins in this area, a definition that would also place parts of southern (especially southeastern) Ohio, as well as southern Indiana and Illinois, within the South (advocates of reckoning southern Ohio as "Southern" also cite the fact that the state's civil rights law includes "persons of Appalachian ancestry" among the categories against which discrimination is prohibited, this group being concentrated in the southeastern part of the state and "Appalachians" being viewed as a subset of "Southerners" by most observers). It should also be noted that many in Kentucky (generally, those in the western and northern regions) do not believe themselves to be "Southerners," historically or culturally—the cite Kentucky's initial neutrality in the Civil War, followed by the state siding with the Union. These Kentuckians often refuse to call themselves either midwestern nor southern.
- Many do not consider Maryland and Delaware to be culturally Southern states, but the designation is disputed due to their proximity to both North and South. Those who see them as Southern cite the fact that although neither joined the Confederacy, slavery remained legal in them until the end of the Civil War in 1865, and that the Mason-Dixon line, long considered to be the border between North and South, is in fact the Maryland-Pennsylvania border. Today, they are sometimes grouped with Southern states for corporate and governmental administrative regions. However, Baltimore, Maryland, Wilmington, Delaware, and Newark, Delaware, lie along the Northeast Corridor that spans Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, which further separates them from the South, and ties them to a culture that has little in common with Southern culture.
- Northern Virginia has been largely settled by Northerners attracted to job opportunities resulting from expansion of the federal government during and after World War II. Still more expansion resulted from the Internet boom around the turn of the 21st century. Economically it is linked to Washington, D.C.. Residents of the region tend to consider it part of the North, as do Southerners. However, it remains politically somewhat conservative, as opposed to the Maryland suburbs of Washington across the Potomac River, which are generally politically quite liberal.
- Prior to its statehood in 1907, Oklahoma was "Indian Territory." The majority of the Native American tribes sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. Oklahoma is similar to Texas in that it has a Southwestern influence. Still it has a strong Southern cultural feel as evidenced by dialect, religion, politics, cuisine, etc. It is geographically often grouped with the Midwest, but culturally is truly more Southern, especially in the eastern part of the state.
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