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Southern United States | HearLore
Southern United States
The Southern United States is not merely a geographic location but a living contradiction that has defied simple definition for centuries. It is a region where the humid subtropical climate nurtures both the most fertile cotton fields in history and the most devastating droughts of the Dust Bowl, creating a landscape of extreme contrasts. The South is home to the largest concentration of African Americans in the United States, yet it was the birthplace of the most rigid system of racial segregation known to the modern world. This region, which includes sixteen states and the District of Columbia, has been the site of the bloodiest battles in American history, the most profound economic transformations, and the most enduring cultural traditions. It is a place where the past is never truly dead, where the legacy of the Civil War still shapes political boundaries, and where the rapid growth of the twenty-first century has collided with the slow-moving traditions of the nineteenth. The South is a region that refuses to be categorized, existing simultaneously as the heart of the Bible Belt and the epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement, as a place of deep rural poverty and the headquarters of some of the world's most powerful corporations.
Echoes of The Old World
The first well-dated evidence of human occupation in the Southern United States dates back to 9500 BC, when Paleo-Indians roamed the land as hunter-gatherers, hunting megafauna that would eventually vanish. By 800 AD, the Mississippian culture had flourished, building elaborate mounds and establishing trading routes that stretched from the East Coast to the Great Lakes. These mound-builders, including the ancestors of the Alabama, Apalachee, Caddo, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Guale, Hitchiti, Houma, and Seminole peoples, created a complex society that would be decimated by European contact. The arrival of Europeans brought diseases to which the natives had no immunity, leading to a massive population decline and the eventual forced removal of Native Americans from their home states to Oklahoma between 1830 and 1850. The predominant culture of the original Southern states was English, with the first voluntary immigrants settling along the eastern coast and pushing as far inland as the Appalachian Mountains by the 18th century. The Spanish and French established settlements in Florida, Texas, and Louisiana, but the English influence was paramount, with the majority of early settlers being indentured servants who gained freedom after working off their passage. The wealthier men, typically members of the English landed gentry, received land grants known as headrights to encourage settlement, creating a social hierarchy that would persist for centuries. The first region to be settled was Tidewater, containing the low-lying plains of southeast Virginia, northeastern North Carolina, southern Maryland, and the Chesapeake Bay. The next region to be settled was the Deep South, beginning in the Province of Carolina and later the Province of Georgia. The last region to be settled was Appalachia, also settled by the Scotch-Irish, who were the largest group of non-English immigrants from the British Isles before the American Revolution. The oldest university in the South, the College of William & Mary, was founded in 1693 in Virginia, pioneering the teaching of political economy and educating future U.S. Presidents Jefferson, Monroe, and Tyler, all from Virginia. Indeed, the entire region dominated politics in the First Party System era, with four of the first five presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, being from Virginia.
The Southern United States is one of the four census regions of the US, including sixteen states and the District of Columbia. It is a region where the humid subtropical climate nurtures both the most fertile cotton fields in history and the most devastating droughts of the Dust Bowl, creating a landscape of extreme contrasts.
When did the Southern United States begin to be settled by Europeans?
The first well-dated evidence of human occupation in the Southern United States dates back to 9500 BC, when Paleo-Indians roamed the land as hunter-gatherers. The first region to be settled by Europeans was Tidewater, containing the low-lying plains of southeast Virginia, northeastern North Carolina, southern Maryland, and the Chesapeake Bay, with immigration beginning in 1607 and continuing until the outbreak of the Revolution in 1775.
How many Confederate states declared secession before Lincoln was inaugurated?
After Abraham Lincoln was elected the first Republican president in 1860, seven cotton states declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America before Lincoln was inaugurated. The Confederate States of America moved its capital to Richmond, Virginia, and the war broke out when Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered his troops to open fire on Fort Sumter in April 1861.
What was the population of Dallas, Texas by 1900?
By 1900, Dallas had a population of more than 42,000, which more than doubled to over 92,000 a decade later. Dallas was the harnessmaking capital of the world and a center of other manufacturing, and in 1907 it built the Praetorian Building, fifteen storeys tall and the first skyscraper west of the Mississippi.
When was the first major oil well in the South drilled?
The first major oil well in the South was drilled at Spindletop near Beaumont, Texas, on the morning of the 10th of January 1901. Other oil fields were later discovered nearby in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and under the Gulf of Mexico, permanently transforming the economy of the West South Central states.
Which states had the highest poverty rates in 2021?
In 2021, nine out of the ten states with the highest poverty rates were in the South. In 2023 all five states with the lowest GDP per capita were in the South: Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, and South Carolina.
Slavery was legal in all of the Thirteen Colonies prior to the American Revolution in 1776, but the Southern Colonies differed in that the proportion of their populations that were African American slaves was much higher than in the Middle Colonies and New England Colonies. The Barbados Slave Code of 1661 served as the basis for the slave codes adopted in the British American colonies of the Province of Carolina and the Province of Georgia. In the British colonies, immigration began in 1607 and continued until the outbreak of the Revolution in 1775. Settlers cleared land, built houses and outbuildings, and on their own farms. The Southern rich owned large plantations that dominated export agriculture and used slaves. Many were involved in the labor-intensive cultivation of tobacco, the first cash crop of Virginia. Tobacco exhausted the soil quickly, requiring that farmers regularly clear new fields. They used old fields as pasture, and for crops such as corn, wheat, or allowed them to grow into woodlots. In the mid-to-late-18th century, large groups of Ulster Scots, later called the Scotch-Irish, and people from the Anglo-Scottish border region immigrated and settled in the back country of Appalachia and the Piedmont. In the 1980 census, 34% of Southerners reported that they were of English ancestry. Except in Louisiana, where French is predominant, English was the largest reported European ancestry in every Southern state by a large margin. The early colonists engaged in warfare, trade, and cultural exchanges. Those living in the backcountry were more likely to encounter Creek Indians, Cherokee, and Choctaws and other regional native groups. The Revolution provided a shock to slavery in the South and other regions of the new country. Thousands of slaves took advantage of wartime disruption to find their own freedom, catalyzed by the British Governor Dunmore of Virginia's promise of freedom for service. Many others were removed by Loyalist owners and became slaves elsewhere in the British Empire. Between 1770 and 1790, there was a sharp decline in the percentage of blacks, from 61% to 44% in South Carolina and from 45% to 36% in Georgia. In addition, some slaveholders were inspired to free their slaves after the Revolution. They were moved by the principles of the Revolution, along with Quaker and Methodist preachers who worked to encourage slaveholders to free their slaves. Planters such as George Washington often freed slaves by their wills. In the Upper South, more than 10% of all blacks were free by 1810, a significant expansion from pre-war proportions of less than 1% free. Cotton became dominant in the lower South after 1800. After the invention of the cotton gin, short staple cotton could be grown more widely. This led to an explosion of cotton cultivation, especially in the frontier uplands of Georgia, Alabama, and other parts of the Deep South, as well as riverfront areas of the Mississippi Delta. Migrants poured into those areas in the early decades of the 19th century, when county population figures rose and fell as swells of people kept moving west. The expansion of cotton cultivation required more slave labor, and the institution became even more deeply an integral part of the South's economy. From the 1820s through the 1850s, more than one million enslaved Africans were transported to the Deep South in forced migration, two-thirds of them by slave traders and the others by masters who moved there. Planters in the Upper South sold slaves in excess of their needs as they shifted from tobacco to mixed agriculture. Many enslaved families were broken up, as planters preferred mostly strong males for field work. By 1840, New Orleans was the wealthiest city in the country and the third largest in population. The success of the city was based on the growth of international trade associated with products being shipped to and from the interior of the country down the Mississippi River. New Orleans also had the largest slave market in the country, as traders brought slaves by ship and overland to sell to planters across the Deep South. The city was a cosmopolitan port with a variety of jobs that attracted more immigrants than other areas of the South. Huguenots were among the first settlers in Charleston, along with the largest number of Orthodox Jews outside of New York City. Numerous Irish immigrants settled in New Orleans, establishing a distinct ethnic enclave now known as the Irish Channel. Germans also went to New Orleans and its environs, resulting in a large area north of the city, along the Mississippi, becoming known as the German Coast. Still greater numbers immigrated to Texas, especially after 1848, where many bought land and were farmers. Many more German immigrants arrived in Texas after the Civil War, where they created the brewing industry in Houston and elsewhere, became grocers in numerous cities, and also established wide areas of farming.
The War That Shattered
By 1856, the South had lost control of Congress, and was no longer able to silence calls for an end to slavery, which came mostly from the more populated, free states of the North. The Republican Party, founded in 1854, pledged to stop the spread of slavery beyond those states where it already existed. After Abraham Lincoln was elected the first Republican president in 1860, seven cotton states declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America before Lincoln was inaugurated. The United States government, both outgoing and incoming, refused to recognize the Confederacy, and when the new Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered his troops to open fire on Fort Sumter in April 1861, war broke out. Only the state of Kentucky attempted to remain neutral, and it could only do so briefly. When Lincoln called for troops to suppress what he referred to as combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary judicial or martial means, four more states decided to secede and join the Confederacy, which then moved its capital to Richmond, Virginia. Although the Confederacy had large supplies of captured munitions and many volunteers, it was slower than the Union in dealing with the border states. While the Upland South border states of Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, as well as the District of Columbia, continued to permit slavery during the Civil War, they remained with the Union, though Kentucky and Missouri both had rival Confederate governments that were formed that were admitted and recognized by the Confederacy. Though early in the war, the Confederacy controlled more than half of Kentucky and the southern portion of Missouri. By March 1862, the Union largely controlled all the border state areas, had shut down all commercial traffic from all Confederate ports, had prevented European recognition of the Confederate government, and was poised to seize New Orleans. The rugged mountainous East Tennessee region attempted to rejoin the Union as a new state, having opposed secession and slavery compared to most of Tennessee. In the four years of war, from 1861 to 1865, the South was the primary battleground, with all but two of the major battles taking place on Southern soil. Union forces led numerous campaigns into the western Confederacy, controlling the border states in 1861, the Tennessee River, the Cumberland River, and New Orleans in 1862, and the Mississippi River in 1863. In the East, however, the Confederate Army under Robert E. Lee beat off attack after attack in its defense of the Confederate capital of Richmond. But when Lee tried to move north, he was repulsed and nearly captured at Sharpsburg in 1862 and Gettysburg in 1863. The Confederacy had the resources for a short war, but was unable to finance or supply a longer war. It reversed the traditional low-tariff policy of the South by imposing a new 15% tax on all imports from the Union. The Union blockade stopped most commerce from entering the South, and smugglers avoided the tax, so the Confederate tariff produced too little revenue to finance the war. Inflated currency was the solution, but that created distrust of the Richmond government. Because of low investment in railroads, the Southern transportation system depended primarily on river and coastal traffic by boat, both of which were shut down by the Union Navy. The small railroad system virtually collapsed, so that by 1864 internal travel was so difficult that the Confederate economy was crippled. The Confederate cause was hopeless by the time Atlanta fell and William T. Sherman marched through Georgia in late 1864, but the rebels fought on until Lee's army surrendered in April 1865. The South suffered more than the North overall, as the Union strategy of attrition warfare meant that Lee could not replace his casualties, and the total war waged by Sherman, Sheridan, and other Union armies devastated the infrastructure and caused widespread poverty and distress. The Confederacy suffered military losses of 95,000 soldiers killed in action and 165,000 who died of disease, for a total of 260,000, out of a total white Southern population at the time of around 5.5 million. Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white males aged 13 to 43 died in the war, including 6% in the North and about 18% in the South. Northern military deaths were greater than Southern military deaths in absolute numbers, but were two-thirds smaller in terms of proportion of the population affected. Once the Confederate forces surrendered, the region moved into the Reconstruction Era, 1865 to 1877, in a partially successful attempt to rebuild the destroyed region and grant civil rights to freed slaves. Southerners who were against the Confederate cause during the Civil War were known as Southern Unionists. They were also known as Union Loyalists or Lincoln's Loyalists. Within the eleven Confederate states, states such as Tennessee, especially East Tennessee, Virginia, which included West Virginia at the time, and North Carolina were home to the largest populations of Unionists. Many areas of Southern Appalachia harbored pro-Union sentiment as well. As many as 100,000 men living in states under Confederate control would serve in the Union Army or pro-Union guerrilla groups. Although Southern Unionists came from all classes, most differed socially, culturally, and economically from the regions dominant pre-war planter class.
The Long Shadow
After the Civil War, the South was devastated in terms of infrastructure and economy. Because of states' reluctance to grant voting rights to freedmen, Congress instituted Reconstruction governments. It established military districts and governors to rule over the South until new governments could be established. Many white Southerners who had actively supported the Confederacy were temporarily disenfranchised. Rebuilding was difficult as people grappled with the effects of a new labor economy of a free market in the midst of a widespread agricultural depression. In addition, the limited infrastructure the South had was mostly destroyed by the war. At the same time, the North was rapidly industrializing. To avoid the social effects of the war, most of the Southern states initially passed black codes. During Reconstruction, these were mostly legally nullified by federal law and anti-Confederate legislatures, which existed for a short time during Reconstruction. There were thousands of people on the move, as African Americans tried to reunite families separated by slave sales, and sometimes migrated for better opportunities in towns or other states. Other freed people moved from plantation areas to cities or towns for a chance to get different jobs. At the same time, whites returned from refuges to reclaim plantations or town dwellings. In some areas, many whites returned to the land to farm for a while. Some freedpeople left the South altogether for states such as Ohio and Indiana, and later, Kansas. Thousands of others joined the migration to new opportunities in the Mississippi and Arkansas Delta bottomlands, and Texas. With passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which outlawed slavery, the 14th Amendment, which granted full U.S. citizenship to African Americans, and the 15th Amendment, which extended the right to vote to African American males, African Americans in the South were made free citizens and were given the right to vote. Under Federal protection, white and black Republicans formed constitutional conventions and state governments. Among their accomplishments were creating the first public education systems in Southern states, and providing for welfare through orphanages, hospitals, and similar institutions. Northerners came south to participate in politics and business. Some were representatives of the Freedmen's Bureau and other agencies of Reconstruction; some were humanitarians with the intent to help black people. Some were adventurers who hoped to benefit themselves by questionable methods. They were all condemned with the pejorative term of carpetbagger. Some Southerners would also take advantage of the disrupted environment and made money off various schemes, including bonds and financing for railroads. White Southerners who supported Reconstruction policies and efforts became known as scalawags. Secret vigilante organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, an organization sworn to perpetuate white supremacy, had arisen quickly after the war's end in the 1860s, and used lynching, physical attacks, house burnings, and other forms of intimidation to keep African Americans from exercising their political rights. Although the first Klan was disrupted by prosecution by the Federal government in the early 1870s, other groups persisted. By the mid-to-late-1870s, some upper class Southerners created increasing resistance to the altered social structure. Paramilitary organizations such as the White League in Louisiana in 1874, the Red Shirts in Mississippi in 1875, and rifle clubs, all White Line organizations, used organized violence against Republicans, both black and white, to remove Republicans from political office, repress and bar black voting, and restore the Democratic Party to power. In 1876 white Democrats regained power in most of the state legislatures. They began to pass laws designed to strip African Americans and Poor Whites from the voter registration rolls. The success of late-19th century interracial coalitions in several states inspired a reaction among some white Democrats, who worked harder to prevent both groups from voting. Despite discrimination, many blacks became property owners in areas that were still developing. For instance, 90% of the Mississippi's bottomlands were still frontier and undeveloped after the war. By the end of the century, two-thirds of the farmers in Mississippi's Delta bottomlands were black. They had cleared the land themselves and often made money in early years by selling off timber. Tens of thousands of migrants went to the Delta, both to work as laborers to clear timber for lumber companies, and many to develop their own farms. Nonetheless, the long agricultural depression, along with disenfranchisement and lack of access to credit, led to many blacks in the Delta losing their property by 1910 and becoming sharecroppers or landless workers over the following decade. More than two generations of free African Americans lost their stake in property. Nearly all Southerners, black and white, suffered economically as a result of the Civil War. Within a few years cotton production and harvest was back to pre-war levels, but low prices through much of the 19th century hampered recovery. They encouraged immigration by Chinese and Italian laborers into the Mississippi Delta. While the first Chinese entered as indentured laborers from Cuba, the majority came in the early 20th century. Neither group stayed long at rural farm labor. The Chinese became merchants and established stores in small towns throughout the Delta, establishing a place between white and black. Migrations continued in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among both blacks and whites. In the last two decades of the 19th century about 141,000 blacks left the South, and more after 1900, totaling a loss of 537,000. After that the movement increased in what became known as the Great Migration from 1910 to 1940, and the Second Great Migration through 1970. Even more whites left the South, some going to California for opportunities and others heading to Northern industrial cities after 1900. Between 1880 and 1910, the loss of whites totaled 1,243,000. Five million more left between 1940 and 1970. From 1890 to 1908, ten of the eleven former Confederate states, along with Oklahoma upon statehood, passed disenfranchising constitutions or amendments that introduced voter registration barriers, such as poll taxes, residency requirements, and literacy tests, that were hard for minorities to meet. Most African Americans, most Mexican Americans, and tens of thousands of poor whites were disenfranchised, losing the vote for decades. In some states, grandfather clauses temporarily exempted white illiterates from literacy tests. The numbers of voters dropped drastically throughout the former Confederacy as a result. This can be seen via the feature Turnout in Presidential and Midterm Elections at the University of Texas' Politics: Barriers to Voting. Alabama, which had established universal white suffrage in 1819 when it became a state, also substantially reduced voting by poor whites. Democrat-controlled legislatures passed Jim Crow laws to segregate public facilities and services, including transportation. While African Americans, poor whites, and civil rights groups started litigation against such provisions in the early 20th century, for decades Supreme Court decisions overturning such provisions were rapidly followed by new state laws with new devices to restrict voting. Most blacks in the former Confederacy and Oklahoma could not vote until 1965, after passage of the Voting Rights Act and Federal enforcement to ensure people could register. Despite increases in the eligible voting population with the inclusion of women, blacks, and those eighteen and over throughout this period, turnout in ex-Confederate states remained below the national average throughout the 20th century. Not until the late 1960s did all American citizens regain protected civil rights by passage of legislation following the leadership of the American Civil Rights Movement. Historian William Chafe has explored the defensive techniques developed inside the African American community to avoid the worst features of Jim Crow as expressed in the legal system, unbalanced economic power, and intimidation and psychological pressure. Chafe says protective socialization by blacks themselves was created inside the community to accommodate white-imposed sanctions while subtly encouraging challenges to those sanctions. Known as walking the tightrope, such efforts at bringing about change were only slightly effective before the 1920s, but did build the foundation that younger African Americans deployed in their aggressive, large-scale activism during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
The New South
At the end of the 19th century, white Democrats in the South had created state constitutions that were hostile to industry and business development, with anti-industrial laws extensive from the time new constitutions were adopted in the 1890s. Banks were few and small; there was little access to credit. Traditional agriculture persisted across the region. Especially in Alabama and Florida, rural minorities held control in many state legislatures long after population had shifted to industrializing cities, and legislators resisted business and modernizing interests. Alabama refused to redistrict between 1901 and 1972, long after major population and economic shifts to cities. For decades Birmingham generated the majority of revenue for the state, for instance, but received little back in services or infrastructure. In the late 19th century, Texas rapidly expanded its railroad network, creating a network of cities connected on a radial plan and linked to the port of Galveston. Strikes and labor unrest served as a reflection of increasing industry. In 1885 Texas ranked ninth among forty states in number of workers involved in strikes, 4,000; for the six-year period it ranked fifteenth. Seventy-five of the one hundred strikes, chiefly interstate strikes of telegraphers and railway workers, occurred in the year 1886. By 1890, Dallas became the largest city in Texas, and by 1900 it had a population of more than 42,000, which more than doubled to over 92,000 a decade later. Dallas was the harnessmaking capital of the world and a center of other manufacturing. As an example of its ambitions, in 1907 Dallas built the Praetorian Building, fifteen storeys tall and the first skyscraper west of the Mississippi, soon to be followed by other skyscrapers. Texas was transformed by a railroad network linking five important cities, among them Houston with its nearby port at Galveston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and El Paso. Each exceeded fifty thousand in population by 1920, with the major cities having three times that population. Business interests were ignored by the Southern Democrat ruling class. Nonetheless, major new industries started developing in cities such as Atlanta, Georgia; Birmingham, Alabama; and Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston, Texas. Growth began occurring at a geometric rate. Birmingham became a major steel producer and mining town, with major population growth in the early decades of the 20th century. The first major oil well in the South was drilled at Spindletop near Beaumont, Texas, on the morning of the 10th of January 1901. Other oil fields were later discovered nearby in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and under the Gulf of Mexico. The resulting Oil Boom permanently transformed the economy of the West South Central states and produced the richest economic expansion after the Civil War. In the early 20th century, invasion of the boll weevil devastated cotton crops in the South, producing an additional catalyst to African Americans' decisions to leave the South. From 1910 to 1970, more than 6.5 million African Americans left the South in the Great Migration to Northern and Western cities, defecting from persistent lynching, violence, segregation, poor education, and inability to vote. Black migration transformed many Northern and Western cities, creating new cultures and music. Many African Americans, like other groups, became industrial workers; others started their own businesses within the communities. Southern whites also migrated to industrial cities like Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, and Los Angeles, where they took jobs in the booming new auto and defense industry. Later, the Southern economy was dealt additional blows by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the economy suffered significant reversals and millions were left unemployed. Beginning in 1934 and lasting until 1939, an ecological disaster of severe wind and drought caused an exodus from Texas and Arkansas, the Oklahoma Panhandle region, and the surrounding plains, in which over 500,000 Americans were homeless, hungry, and jobless. Thousands would leave the region to seek economic opportunities along the West Coast. President Franklin D. Roosevelt noted the South as the number one priority in terms of need of assistance during the Great Depression. His administration created programs such as the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933 to provide rural electrification and stimulate development. Locked into low-productivity agriculture, the region's growth was slowed by limited industrial development, low levels of entrepreneurship, and the lack of capital investment. World War II marked a time of dramatic change within the South from an economic standpoint, as new industries and military bases were developed by the federal government, providing much-needed capital and infrastructure in many regions. People from all parts of the US came to the South for military training and work in the region's many bases and new industries. During and after the war millions of hard-scrabble farmers, both white and black, left agriculture for other occupations and urban jobs. The United States began mobilizing for war in a major way in the spring of 1940. The warm weather of the South proved ideal for building 60% of the Army's new training camps and nearly half the new airfields. In all, 40% of spending on new military installations went to the South. For example, in 1940 the small town of 1500 people in Starke, Florida, became the base of Camp Blanding. By March 1941, 20,000 men were constructing a permanent camp for 60,000 soldiers. Money flowed freely for the war effort, as over $4 billion went into military facilities in the South, and another $5 billion into defense plants. Major shipyards were built in Virginia, in Charleston, South Carolina, and along the Gulf Coast. Huge warplane plants were opened in Dallas-Fort Worth and Georgia. The most secret and expensive operation was at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where unlimited amounts of locally generated electricity were used to prepare uranium for the atom bomb. The number of production workers doubled during the war. Most training centers, factories, and shipyards were closed in 1945, but not all, and the families that left hardscrabble farms remained to find jobs in the growing urban South. The region had finally reached the take off stage into industrial and commercial growth, although its income and wage levels lagged well behind the national average. Nevertheless, as George B. Tindall notes, the transformation was, The demonstration of industrial potential, new habits of mind, and a recognition that industrialization demanded community services. Per capita income jumped 140% from 1940 to 1945, compared to 100% elsewhere in the United States. Southern income rose from 59% to 65%. Dewey Grantham says the war, brought an abrupt departure from the South's economic backwardness, poverty, and distinctive rural life, as the region moved perceptively closer to the mainstream of national economic and social life. Since 1970, the proportion of the African American population living in the South stabilized and began slightly increasing. Farming shifted from cotton and tobacco, to include cattle, rice, soybeans, corn, and other foods. Industrial growth increased in the 1960s and greatly accelerated into the 1980s and 1990s. Several large urban areas in Texas, Georgia, and Florida grew to over four million people. Rapid expansion in industries such as autos, telecommunications, textiles, technology, banking, and aviation gave some states in the South an industrial strength to rival large states elsewhere in the country. By the 2000 census, the South, along with the West, was leading the nation in population growth. With this growth, however, has come long commute times and air pollution problems in cities such as Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, and others that rely on sprawling development and highway networks.
The Modern Mosaic
In the 21st century, and especially after the 2010 midterm elections, the Republican Party has largely dominated the South, both at the state and federal levels. As of 2024, Republicans control both houses of the state legislatures of 10 out of the eleven former Confederate States, the sole exception being the Virginia General Assembly. However, there are still some Democratic statewide officeholders in the South, such as Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, North Carolina governor Josh Stein, Virginia's U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, and Georgia's U.S. Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. In 2019, Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Southern states included: Texas with 50, Virginia with 21, Florida with 18, Georgia with 17, North Carolina with 11, and Tennessee with 10. In 2022, Texas led the nation with the most Fortune 500 company headquarters with 53. This economic expansion has enabled parts of the South to report some of the lowest unemployment rates in the United States. Even with certain southern states and areas doing well economically, many southern states and areas still have high poverty rates when compared to the U.S. nationally. In 2021, nine out of the ten states with the highest poverty rates were in the South. Also, in 2023 all five states with the lowest GDP per capita were in the South: Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, and South Carolina. In the late 20th century, the South changed dramatically. It saw a boom in its service economy, manufacturing base, high technology industries, and the financial sector. Texas in particular witnessed dramatic growth and population change with the dominance of the energy industry and tourism industries, such as the Alamo Mission in San Antonio. Tourism in Florida and along the Gulf Coast also grew steadily throughout the last decades of the 20th century. Numerous new automobile production plants have opened in the region, or are soon to open, such as Mercedes-Benz in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Hyundai in Montgomery, Alabama; the BMW production plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina; Toyota plants in Georgetown, Kentucky, Blue Springs, Mississippi and San Antonio; the GM manufacturing plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee; a Honda factory in Lincoln, Alabama; the Nissan North American headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee, and factories in Smyrna, Tennessee and Canton, Mississippi; a Kia factory in West Point, Georgia; the Volkswagen Chattanooga Assembly Plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee; and Ford Motor Company's Blue Oval City near Stanton, Tennessee. The two largest research parks in the country are located in the South: Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, the world's largest, and the Cummings Research Park in Huntsville, Alabama, the world's fourth largest. In medicine, the Texas Medical Center in Houston has achieved international recognition in education, research, and patient care, especially in the fields of heart disease, cancer, and rehabilitation. In 1994 the Texas Medical Center was the largest medical center in the world including fourteen hospitals, two medical schools, four colleges of nursing, and six university systems. The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is consistently ranked the No. 1 cancer research and treatment center in the United States. Many major banking corporations have headquarters in the region. Bank of America and Truist Financial are in Charlotte. Wachovia was headquartered there before its purchase by Wells Fargo. Regions Financial Corporation is in Birmingham, as is AmSouth Bancorporation, and previously BBVA Compass before its acquisition by PNC Financial Services. Atlanta is the district headquarters of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Many corporations are headquartered in Atlanta and its surrounding area, such as The Coca-Cola Company, Delta Air Lines, and The Home Depot, and also many cable television networks, such as the Turner Broadcasting System, CNN, TBS, TNT, Turner South, Cartoon Network, and The Weather Channel. Southern public schools in the past have ranked in the lower half of some national surveys. When allowance for race is considered, a 2007 US Government list of test scores often shows white fourth and eighth graders performing better than average for reading and math; while black fourth and eighth graders also performed better than average. This comparison does not hold across the board. Mississippi often scores lower than national averages, no matter how statistics are compared. Newer data from 2009 suggests that secondary school education in the South is on par nationally, with 72% of high schoolers graduating compared to 73% nationwide. The Southern United States is home to some of the nation's largest and most prominent public and private institutions of higher education. Notable public colleges and universities in the South include: University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Texas at Austin, University of Houston, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Florida State University, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Georgia State University, Georgia Tech, George Mason University, University of Florida, University of Georgia, Texas A&M University, Florida A&M University, North Carolina A&T State University, University of Tennessee, College of William & Mary, North Carolina State University, University of Maryland, College Park, University of Mississippi, Auburn University, Clemson University, University of South Carolina, James Madison University, Virginia Tech, Louisiana State University, University of Alabama, University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of Arkansas, University of Oklahoma, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, Virginia Military Institute. Notable private colleges and universities in the South include: Duke University, Rice University, Vanderbilt University, Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, Georgetown University, Emory University, University of Miami, University of Richmond, Liberty University, Tulane University, Wake Forest University, Southern Methodist University, Washington and Lee University, Davidson College, Berry College, Spelman College, Morehouse College, Howard University, Baylor University.
The Cultural Tapestry
The American South is known for its distinctive dialect and accent. The predominant culture of the South is English, and has its origins with the settlement of the region by large groups of people particularly from parts of West Midlands, southwest England, and southeast England, such as Sussex, Shropshire, and the West Country who moved to the Tidewater and the eastern parts of the Deep South in the 17th and early 18th centuries. For example, the city of Birmingham, Alabama, is named after Birmingham, England in the West Midlands. Northern English, Scots lowlanders, and Ulster-Scots, later called the Scotch-Irish, who settled in Appalachia and the Upland South in the mid to late 18th century, and the many African people who were brought to the American South as slaves. Their descendants, identified as Black or African American people, compose the United States' second-largest racial minority, accounting for 12.1% of the total population according to the 2000 census. Despite Jim Crow era outflow to the North, the majority of the black population remains concentrated in Southern states and has heavily contributed to the cultural blend of religion, food, art, and music, including spiritual, blues, jazz, R&B, soul music, country music, zydeco, bluegrass, and rock and roll, that characterizes Southern culture today. Overall, the South has had lower housing values, lower household incomes, and lower cost of living than the rest of the United States. These factors, combined with the fact that Southerners have continued to maintain strong loyalty to family ties, has led some sociologists to label white Southerners an ethnic or quasi-ethnic group, though this interpretation has been subject to criticism on the grounds that proponents of the view do not satisfactorily indicate how Southerners meet the criteria of ethnicity. In previous censuses, the largest ancestry group identified by Southerners was English or mostly English, with 19,618,370 self-reporting English as an ancestry on the 1980 census, followed by 12,709,872 listing Irish and 11,054,127 Afro-American. Almost a third of all Americans who claim English ancestry can be found in the American South, and over a quarter of all Southerners claim English descent as well. The Southern planter class originated from the early modern English landed gentry, who were aristocratic landowners but not peers or titled nobility. According to historian G. E. Mingay, the gentry were landowners whose wealth made possible a certain kind of education, a standard of comfort, and a degree of leisure and a common interest in ways of spending it. Leisure distinguished gentry from businessmen who gained their wealth through work. The gentry did not work; their income came largely from rents paid by tenant farmers living on their estates. The concept of Southern chivalry in the Antebellum South originated from the gentry rank of Gentleman, acting as a chivalric ideal of the white planter class supposedly descended from the knights and Cavaliers of the Medieval and colonial eras. Several Southern states, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, were among the British colonies that sent delegates to sign the Declaration of Independence and then fought against the government, Great Britain, along with the Middle and New England colonies, during the Revolutionary War. The basis for much of Southern culture derives from these states being among the original Thirteen Colonies, and from much of the population of the colonial South having ancestral links to colonists who emigrated west. Southern manners and customs reflect the relationship with England that was held by the early population. In 1765, London philanthropist Dr. John Fothergill remarked on the cultural differences of the British American colonies southward from Maryland and those to the north, suggesting that the Southerners were marked by idleness and extravagance. Fothergill suggested that Southerners were more similar to the people of the Caribbean than to the colonies to the north. J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur's 1782 Letters from an American Farmer described Charleston, South Carolina, slaveholders as having all that life affords most bewitching and pleasurable, without the constraints of the North. The South is a diverse meteorological region with numerous climatic zones, including temperate, sub-tropical, tropical, and arid, though the South generally has a reputation as hot and humid, with long summers and short, mild winters. Most of the South, except for the areas of higher elevations and areas near the western, southern, and some northern fringes, falls in the humid subtropical climate zone. Crops grow readily in the South due to its climate consistently providing growing seasons of at least six months before the first frost. Some common environments include bayous and swamplands, the southern pine forests, the warm temperate montane forest of the Appalachians, the savannas of the southern Great Plains, and the subtropical jungle and maritime forests along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Unique flora include various species of magnolia, rhododendron, cane, palm, and oak, among others. Fauna of the region is also diverse, encompassing a plethora of amphibian species, reptiles such as the green anole, the venomous cottonmouth snake, and the American alligator, mammals like the American black bear, the swamp rabbit, and the nine-banded armadillo, and birds such as the roseate spoonbill and the extinct but symbolic carolina parakeet. The question of how to define the boundaries and subregions of the South has long been the focus of research and debate. Howard W. Odum, Southern regions of the United States, 1936, University of North Carolina Press, Rebecca Mark, and Rob Vaughan, The South: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures, 2004. As defined by the United States Census Bureau, the Southern region of the United States includes sixteen states and the District of Columbia. As of 2010, an estimated 114,555,744 people, or thirty-seven percent of all U.S. residents, lived in the South, the nation's most populous region. The Census Bureau defines three smaller divisions: The South Atlantic states: Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. The East South Central states: Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee. The West South Central states: Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. A survey conducted by social geographers in 2010 selected thirteen states as the cultural South: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. The Council of State Governments, an organization for communication and coordination between states, includes the same thirteen states as well as Texas and Missouri in its South regional office. Other terms related to the South include: The Old South: Can mean either southern states that were among the Thirteen Colonies, Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, or all southern slave states before 1860, which also includes Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. The New South: All southern states following the American Civil War, post-Reconstruction era. Southeastern United States: Usually includes the Carolinas, the Virginias, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. Southern Appalachia: Mainly refers to areas situated in the southern Appalachian Mountains, namely Eastern Kentucky, East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, Western Maryland, West Virginia, Southwest Virginia, North Georgia and Northwestern South Carolina. Upper South: Usually includes Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and on rare occasions Missouri, Maryland and Delaware. When combined with the southern Appalachian Mountains, it is sometimes referred to as Greater Appalachia following Ulster Protestant migrations to the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. Deep South: Various definitions, usually includes Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina. Border States: Included Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. These were Southern slave states on or near the border of the Confederacy that did not secede from the U.S. Some of their residents joined the Union armed forces and some joined the Confederate armed forces. In addition, West Virginia separated from the Confederate state of Virginia and was admitted to the Union as a slave state, but with its state constitution providing for gradual abolition. Although Kentucky and Missouri had not seceded, they had separate Confederate state governments, with the Confederate government of Missouri and the Confederate government of Kentucky. The Confederacy controlled more than half of Kentucky and the southern portion of Missouri early in the war but were in exile after 1862 and were represented in the Confederate Congress and by stars on the Confederate battle flag. Dixie: Nickname applied to Southern U.S. region, various definitions include certain areas more than others, but most commonly associated with the eleven former Confederate States. Solid South: Electoral voting bloc largely controlled by the Democratic Party from 1877 to 1964, largely resulting from disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction era in the late 19th century. Disfranchisement effectively denied most of the black and sometimes poor white population from voting or holding public office during this time period. Gulf Coast: Includes Gulf coasts of Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Alabama. Tidewater: Low-lying Atlantic coastal plain regions of Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and North Carolina. Mid-South: Various definitions, includes states within the Census Bureau of the East and West South Central United States. In another informal definition, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi are included, with adjoining areas of other states. Although not included in the Census definition, two U.S. territories located southeast of Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, are sometimes included as part of the Southern United States. The Federal Aviation Administration includes Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands as part of the South, as does the Agricultural Research Service and the U.S. National Park Service.