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Btw I know a Haitian women born and raised in DC (actually born in Switzerland but moved to DC when she was like 1 or 2) but she has no southern accent at all and sounds 100% non-southern.
She could live in Cali or NYC and people would think she were a local in those places.
Just goes to show you that African Americans and the southern accent is just part of them no matter where they go and no matter how many generations have passed!
I would say Chicago, not just because of one the Great Migration but the fact that Chicago has ties to pretty much every region of the US due being surrounded by lakes, rivers, railroads, and highways. Chicago, since it's inception, has always been a transportation hub for the US. Philadelphia is mainly visited by East coasters whereas Chicago is basically America's heartland city.
Which ones? And are they located north or south of U.S. 50?
U.S. 50 runs about 150 miles to Philadelphia's south; it passes through Washington, DC, on its way to its eastern end in New York City and Philadelphia.
U.S. 30 - the historic Lincoln Highway from here west (it's U.S. 1 between here and New York) - is the spine road of the Main Line and passes through Philadelphia's heart.
U.S. 40 passes through Wilmington's southern suburbs before entering New Jersey and running across one of its two southernmost counties before ending at Atlantic City. (Some towns in that part of NJ, by the way, have an awfully Southern look and feel.) Perhaps you meant that highway?
Btw I know a Haitian women born and raised in DC (actually born in Switzerland but moved to DC when she was like 1 or 2) but she has no southern accent at all and sounds 100% non-southern.
She could live in Cali or NYC and people would think she were a local in those places.
Just goes to show you that African Americans and the southern accent is just part of them no matter where they go and no matter how many generations have passed!
Nobody that isn't African American in DC has a Southern accent anymore. The natives sound like Midwestern people to me and I don't mean the Fargo version.
Not sure why segregation would even be brought up as a justification for "southerness", as every major city in this country is very notably racially segregated. The idea that it's an exclusively southern trait is pretty laughable.
Also, if we're getting into Civil War allegiances, I recall that NYC at that point in time had plenty of Confederate sympathizers due to economic ties to slavery.
How about the economic relationship between the textile mills of New England and slave-produced cotton? Sounds pretty complicit to me.
I think the issue is that folks have this notion of Northern "purity" in their minds, whereby Northerners wanted nothing to do with slavery or all of them were fiercely anti-Confederate. That's honestly nowhere near true.
Also, LOL, there's nothing "genteel" about the Main Line in the Southern sense. It's classic, "old money" Northeastern suburbia through and through. There's plenty of parallels, particularly in terms of classism, between the coastal Northeast and coastal South (think Charleston versus Nantucket), but you'd never mistake them for one another.
I couldn't disagree with you more, and you totally miss the point.
Social segregation is an unfortunate part of American life everywhere. But actual legal or quasi-legal segregation is entirely different... Many modern states, for example try and distance themselves from their pro-Confederacy roots by claiming "border" status, like Maryland... But one test of mine is: did you bar African Americans from your state universities until the 1950s and 60s. If the answer is yes, in my mind your either a Confederacy or Confederacy leaning state, and Maryland meets that classification (add to this the fact that John Wilkes Booth is from Maryland and was more/less typical of the Southern sympathizing ways of the area at the time, coupled with such other aspects as a Robert E. Lee park just outside Baltimore and, well, you get the idea...). Philadelphia toed the line but backed away from outright in-your-face segregation, except more subtly like the segregated cemeteries.
You don't know what your talking about when you deny the genteel sense of the Main Line and elsewhere in Philly. The old-money wealthy lifestyle of LI or Westchester or Southern CT is very different from old money Philadelphia and if you can't see it, I simply can't help you... Plus I don't know why you're so sensitive about this; it's as if I'm calling you some kind of racist and I'm not. I have no agenda here. I'm just telling you what I see and sense here in Philly in my 1.5+ decades living here. Philly is not Yankee territory like a Cleveland, Detroit or Chicago, ... it's just not.
Since I moved here, I've seen and heard, directly for example, how much Philadelphia blue bloods relate more to Princeton than they do other Ivies -- some say, directly, that Princeton is more a Philly school than a NYC school even though it sits midway between the 2 cities (and I believe is in the NYC metropolitan area, ... but I could be wrong on that), ... even Penn, which sits within Philly borders... Princeton has historically been a Southern influenced school even though it sit in Yankee NJ. It has more of a stuffy genteel-ism that's simply different than the other Big 3 schools, Harvard and Yale... Those Princeton eating clubs is one example. When the Civil War broke out, there was definite split and tension on Princeton's campus (then formally the College of New Jersey) simply because so many Southern planters sent their sons there... It's an atmosphere that quietly appeals to Philly sensibilities... Nothing wrong with that and, again, I'm not saying Philadelphia is a Southern/Confederate city because it's is not/was not... But it leans that way on several levels I was not aware of until I moved here -- before then I figured Philly and New York were pretty much interchangeable in terms of atmosphere and mentality ... I just lumped them all into being "East Coast" cities... but clearly they are very, very different on that score...
... and to say Chicago is more southern than Philly simply is way off target; at least in my book.
U.S. 50 runs about 150 miles to Philadelphia's south; it passes through Washington, DC, on its way to its eastern end in New York City and Philadelphia.
U.S. 30 - the historic Lincoln Highway from here west (it's U.S. 1 between here and New York) - is the spine road of the Main Line and passes through Philadelphia's heart.
U.S. 40 passes through Wilmington's southern suburbs before entering New Jersey and running across one of its two southernmost counties before ending at Atlantic City. (Some towns in that part of NJ, by the way, have an awfully Southern look and feel.) Perhaps you meant that highway?
And 30 passes through the southern Chicago suburbs.
40 crosses southern Illinois, from St. Louis to southern Indiana.
One thing is for certain. In terms of history, Chicago absolutely is a Yankee city the way Cleveland is. Philly isn't a Yankee city. It is Quaker. Historically Pennsylvania was Quaker territory and Chicago Yankee.
The 11 Nations lists Chicago in Yankee territory where Philly is Midlands (deriving from Quaker culture).
Not that that makes any difference in terms of Southern influence however.
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