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**I just saw an add for deep southerners opinions of KY which is what prompted this**
I feel like people often regard the Deep South or Deep Southerners opinions of all things Southern as the litmus test of what is or isn't "southern." What do those from the Upper South (VA, TN, NC, KY) think about the Deep South States or those from the Deep South (GA, SC, LA, MS, TX)?
Interesting topic. I lived in nova for a bit. We didn’t even view ourselves as southerners but didn’t really break the south as two different regions. It’s the south and it’s all deep. That includes you Tennessee and Kentucky
I’ll be honest, I never viewed the divide as Deep/Upper South. On a micro level, I viewed the South as city (I grew up in a Raleigh suburb) vs country (I visited my Mema on her farm outside Pittsboro). On a more macro level, I saw the South as Atlantic (Florida, SC, Georgia, NC, Virginia) and the hinterlands (Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas).
All of it colored by how I grew up and what I saw. Some of the markers I learned distinguished the Deep South didn’t make much sense to me. I saw cotton when I headed east in NC. The biggest cultural shift I could see when I passed Pedro on 95 when we went to SC was better access to fireworks and cheaper gas. Visiting family in Alpharetta, they seemed to be living a similar (if more hectic) life to the one I saw in Raleigh. If there was any noticeable regional shift I was aware of, it was with Appalachia.
Now that this thread has been resurrected. I wanted to point out something I found fascinating concerning the "deep south" and the rest of the "south". And that is the results of the 1964 presidential election.
Goldwater won six states... his home state of Arizona, and the deep south states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. So there was SOMETHING different about the deep south and the rest of the south in 1964.
I could speculate why that was but it would probably be more suited for P&OC than here. And I would suggest that the things that did make it different have certainly waned over the last sixty years to where they may not even exist anymore. But the fact that they existed even then. Enough for yellow dog dems to vote Republican in those states is significant at some level some how.
Also to note, LBJ pushed hard on Goldwater’s anti-tobacco farm subsidy policies, which obviously affected farmers and manufacturers disproportionately in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and NC. There were definitely other things (namely 1 big one) at play.
The 3 states that all voted for Strom in ‘48, Goldwater in ‘64, and Wallace in ‘68 were Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. That’s obviously not a coincidence.
They're called Deep South "Purists." There are a few on this board, but not many. From my experience, folks from GA have been the most high-toned in this regard, even questioning the Southern status of the likes of Louisiana and Arkansas.
Us folks from non-Deep South states yet undeniably still Southern (TN, TX, AR, OK, NC, KY, FL, VA) just have to roll our eyes at such arrogance.....part of it too, in some cases, is just some good-hearted ribbing.
For example, my buddy from Shreveport doesn't question the Southern status of Oklahoma at all, but another friend of mine from GA claims that neither OK/TX/AR/LA are truly Southern because they're west of Mississippi. That kind of thinking is flawed, but shouldn't really matter to us folks who know who we are and where we're from.
Some Cajuns from South Louisiana even claim that Shreveport is "Yankees", but that's the "north of I-10" thing. Generally, however, a lot of people in Louisiana and Mississippi do accept Arkansas as a Southern state but question the Southernness of Texas (except for East Texas), Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Virginia, and some even Tennessee for some reason, though Gatlinburg is a favorite tourist destination for Louisiana people.
I'm a Louisiana native (born in the New Orleans area, now live near Baton Rouge) who has also lived in Maryland and West Virginia. In southern West Virginia most people considered themselves Southern. I'd say that West Virginia is culturally more similar to Louisiana than Maryland but climactically it feels Northern and because of the high elevations the winters are even more bitterly cold than Baltimore despite being further south. The Appalachian accents are different but they are much more like the non-Cajun Southern accents in Louisiana than the Yankee accents of the Northeast cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, etc. Southern WV did support the South during the war and you actually see more Confederate flags displayed in public in West Virginia than Louisiana because Louisiana has a large black population so many people avoid having it in public to avoid trouble, but many people in Louisiana do fly the Confederate flag in private in their homes. In WV there is less of a need for political correctness because of the lower black population.
Upper South and Deep South to me are just about geography and location. Sure, culture might vary a little as it always does some from state to state but not much.
I live in KY, and outside of Louisville and the Cincinnati suburbs, people here call themselves Southerners and a large percentage of the population have Southern accents. KY had segregated schools, bathrooms, and theater seating among other things just like in Mississippi until the Civil Rights movement. There was a statue of Jefferson Davis in the state capital rotunda until just recently. Much of the food here is similar as well. The first time I was served grits with breakfast or had green fried tomatoes was in KY.
So if people in the deep South think they have a monopoly on being Southern, then they are mistaken.
Last edited by marino760; 09-01-2023 at 05:48 PM..
I’m a yankee but am intimately familiar with Georgia and Virginia. I’ve found the Upper South to be more sympathetic to the Deep South than vice versa.
Native Georgians I’ve met don’t even consider Virginia to be the South.
Native Virginians consider themselves to be apart of a common region with GA and the rest of the Deep South.
I may be in minority for saying this but having lived for a substantial amount of time in Montgomery (AL), about 30% of Kentucky (mostly the northern portion of it) doesn't feel like the Deep South, and the central part of the state is where it starts to feel "somewhat" Deep Southern, then the southern section of KY is where it actually feels undoubtedly Deep Southern. I would definitely say KY is much more Southern than states like Texas for the fact that it has less cultural & geographical varieties. All other people here say KY is solidly Southern, but I beg to differ. It's sort of a mixture of Southern and Midwestern.
I’m a yankee but am intimately familiar with Georgia and Virginia. I’ve found the Upper South to be more sympathetic to the Deep South than vice versa.
Native Georgians I’ve met don’t even consider Virginia to be the South.
Native Virginians consider themselves to be apart of a common region with GA and the rest of the Deep South.
Very believable. I keep telling my friends and family in the South about VA is Southern as well and they still think it’s Northeastern.
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That kind of thinking is flawed, but shouldn't really matter to us folks who know who we are and where we're from.
