When did Miami lose its southern culture? (Miami Beach, Homestead: transplants, hotels)

[Escondudo]

There has been a lot of debate about how southern Miami is. The consensus seems to be that it used to be southern, but not anymore. My question is when did it lose that southern culture? (And how?)

[tallrick]

1980, the beginning of the FIRE economy (reaganomics) and the invasion from Mariel. Hurricane Andrew finished off what was left. The city itself was never "southern" nor was Miami Beach.

[StarfishKey]

The day air conditioning was invented.

[popcorn247]

I think Homestead still has 'southern culture'. Good, home-cooking at a couple diners in town, red-necks are alive and well.....airboats, swamp buggies are often seen. Southern accents heard from locals who, for generations, have lived down here.

[Georgianbelle]

Rednecks are everywhere not just in the South. Southern culture is CULTURE like in Charleston or Savannah. Miami never really had that. It is a seaside town with many immigrants and transplants, and it has been that way forever.

[canudigit]

Didn't wealthy New Yorkers build most of the city of Miami after A/C was invented? I couldn't believe it when I read the title of this thread, because if you took away every northern transplant or descendent of one and every person of Cuban/Haitian/other Latino descent...would there be anyone left?

[tallrick]

Miami was a bubble town even in the 1920's. It has always been a place that suckers go to blow their money. I remember as a child friends of my parents complained about New Yorkers and their driving and the old saying, "you have to go north to go South". But starting in 1980 a lot of those people ran for Tennessee and North Carolina after the island invasion.

[Escondudo]

Originally Posted by canudigit

Didn't wealthy New Yorkers build most of the city of Miami after A/C was invented? I couldn't believe it when I read the title of this thread, because if you took away every northern transplant or descendent of one and every person of Cuban/Haitian/other Latino descent...would there be anyone left?

Miami was founded in 1896, so it came before air conditioning.

It is true that if you took away immigrants and transplants TODAY, there would be nobody left. But, this wasn't the case decades ago. They even had Jim Crow segregation in Miami through the 1960s, not allowing Muhammad Ali to stay at hotels in white areas. Clearly, it wasn't a northern bubble yet.

[TooLoud]

Originally Posted by popcorn247

I think Homestead still has 'southern culture'. Good, home-cooking at a couple diners in town, red-necks are alive and well.....airboats, swamp buggies are often seen. Southern accents heard from locals who, for generations, have lived down here.

I dont think any of the Southern accents are from Homestead natives. I know someone who has a southern accent and lives in Homestead, but they moved from NC

[Papillons2]

I grew up in the Chicago area in the '60s and '70s and the perception there was never that Miami was a "southern" city -- and this was before the influx from Cuba and the Caribbean. Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, Nashville and Charlotte were considered the major cities of the South -- never Miami (although some elements of "southern" culture obviously existed). My guess is that it was because so many northerners had moved there over the years and made up so much of the population. Nobody up there really considered New Orleans a "southern" city either, probably because of the French influence.