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Actually, Michigan is on the Northern end of what is known as "The Hillbilly Highway" that ran from Tennesse to Michigan. Peopls leaving TN and KY for work in the factories in the Midwest. They took their culture with them. Indiana, illinois, Ohio and Michigan are loaded with Tennesseans and Kentuckians natives and threir kids and grandkids, especially Indiana. Many of those descendants moved back south and west when the factory jobs dried up. That Hillbilly Highway took a bunch down to Texas.
I am a living example of this. My grandparents moved up to Michigan in the 20s. Southeast Michigan today is filled with people descended from southern states. Like you said when Michigan failed many of their descendants returned to the south. That is exactly what I did. In fact all of their grandchildren but one now live below the mason Dixon line. I guess my family was never meant to live in the north.
I can say without a doubt that large pockets of southern culture do exist in south east Michigan. That however does not mean it is in the whole state. Central, West and northern Michigan are typical German/Scandinavian in culture and that is true of the upper Midwest as a whole. In fact the people of the rest of Michigan definitely notice that people from the southeast part of the state are distinctly different from the rest of Michigan even if they do no know why or how they are different. This southern influence is limited to southeast Michigan and usually near places where a lot of people worked in car plants. Drive away from Detroit and flint and poof it’s gone.
Missouri was an easy answer for me but is it fair to call it a Northern state to begin with? It is not any more geographically northern than is is southern. It's in the middle.
Interesting that Missouri is in first place and neighboring Kansas is in last place. Johnson County Kansas (suburban Kansas City) is solidly Midwestern but areas of Southern Kansas do have a Southern vibe including Wichita.
Interesting that Missouri is in first place and neighboring Kansas is in last place. Johnson County Kansas (suburban Kansas City) is solidly Midwestern but areas of Southern Kansas do have a Southern vibe including Wichita.
I don’t notice as much of a southern vibe in Wichita as I do more of a western or southwestern vibe. It is still predominately midwestern. There are area of southeastern Kansas that might be considered more southern as it is near or part of the Ozarks region.
I don’t notice as much of a southern vibe in Wichita as I do more of a western or southwestern vibe. It is still predominately midwestern. There are area of southeastern Kansas that might be considered more southern as it is near or part of the Ozarks region.
Only a tiny sliver of SE Kansas is technically in the Ozarks, and only the portion south of US 400 has any real southern influence, and when you get west of US 283 or so, its more "Southwestern Lite" than anything with some scrub plants starting to appear and a little sand instead of grass. Part of the old Santa Fe trail passes through that section of KS. However, it was settled too late to really get those "southern influences" going, and unlike MO, never was a state that permitted slaverly nor supported Jim Crow laws. Only that extreme SE corner has any hint of "Dixieness" IMO.
In the poll, I'd say Maryland in terms of a percentage of the state acknowledged as such historically, and Missouri in a contemporary sense. Most of the state along and south of I-70, except for the area around KC, St. Louis, and Columbia (despite Mizz. U being in the SEC) still has that genteel Southern influence. Keep in mind, Maryland's history is VERY southern prior to the 1960s, except for the western panhandle. Desegregation in MD happened in the 1950s, which isn't that much earlier (mid-late 1960s) compared to states further south. Baltimore was an island of progressiveness much like New Orleans, Memphis, and Birmingham were in the century following the Civil War. But in the last 50 years, Maryland has very little respect for its southern past and has increasingly looked Northeast (leaving the ACC, leaving the Southern Governors Association, its largest city sometimes viewed as "Rust Belt", and its state capital as an alternative to a New England town as opposed to Charleston or Savannah.
Southern IL and IN may have their southern influences, but its certainly not to the degree of MO with their geographical borders further north. There's little southern about Ohio, and the parts of KY and WV it border aren't that southern compared to much of the rest of those states.
Pennsylvania is the LEAST southern out of all mentioned. Yes, you could of have it included if you excluded Maryland, but there's almost ZERO southern influences historically, and one of the arguments that people tend to confuse "rural" with "southern". PA's "T" is just more "old school" than anything else, where the culture seems like a decade or two behind the times compared to Philly/Pittsburgh. I enjoy the many quaint towns, small cities, antique stores, old architecture, and less frantic lifestyle when I visit there, and these are IMO where "proper Pennsylvanians" reside, belonging there for hundreds of years in some cases. Remember, even Northerners once were more religious, and the "T" seems to have more devout worshipers for example.
Delaware is small and there's definitely some southern influences from about Smyrna southward, currently and historically, but much of it just feels more "Pax Americana" than anything else, and the beaches area isn't much different from the Jersey/Long Island beaches.
Many northern states have pockets of southern or borderline southern culture. Which one has the most of the this?
I would guess the state with the most African Americans....since they nearly all migrated from the south, excluding those states with high number of black immigrants.
Interesting that Missouri is in first place and neighboring Kansas is in last place. Johnson County Kansas (suburban Kansas City) is solidly Midwestern but areas of Southern Kansas do have a Southern vibe including Wichita.
I've never gotten a Southern vibe out of Wichita, at all. It's pretty quintessential Plains Midwest.
If anything, the Midwestern influence and culture extends past the southern boundaries of the Midwest once you get past the Ozarks and out on the Plains. I think I-44 is a rough demarcation of this. To the south and east, you have the Ozarks, which have always felt like a western cousin to Appalachia, culturally. In Missouri you run into the Bootheel, which is basically the northern reaches of the Delta. Kansas is completely west or north of this line, and even the parts of Oklahoma that are north and west of this feel more like the Midwest than the South.
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