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Southern United States
Alabama
Arkansas
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maryland
Mississippi
North Carolina
Oklahoma
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
West Virginia
Washington, DC
Whoever said North Carolina is not southern? That seems absurd. These are the places I've heard be debated:
- Baltimore / DC. It's not too hard to understand this one; these cities are very connected with the other cities in the northeast corridor. The culture is more similar to Philadelphia than it is to major southern cities
- NoVA - At the end of the day this area is an extension of DC
- South Florida - Feels more like the Caribbean, has a Cuban culture that has no association with the traditional southern culture
- Missouri - St. Louis feels midwestern, but the areas to the southeast are quite southern
- Oklahoma - 50/50 mixture of southern and great plains elements
- Texas - I think most agree that East Texas and Houston are southern. West of I35, north of Austin is part of the great plains, El Paso is in the mountain west, South Texas has many ties with Northern Mexico, ultimately it's just too geographically big of a state to put into a single cultural region, particularly one rooted a thousand miles to the east.
For the nothernmost southern city, I think I go with Louisville. DC/Baltimore do have some southern elements, but not enough for me to classify as the south.
Both Baltimoere and DC are southern. Any southern traits that the 2 regions are lacking does not make them any less southern, but rather goes to show that southern cities have those traits as well. Also, neither city is anything like Philly. Different culture from a different region.
White people who aren't from the South don't think it is. Which is why people try moving the goalposts on popular areas like Northern Virginia, Charlotte, Raleigh, Miami. So they can still be the "socially acceptable" non-Southern Americans while getting all that the South has to offer them.
Some areas like Miami and Northern Virginia being on kind of the boundary one can argue of the Southern US has made it so that people can make those arguments that they are not Southern because they are too close to other regions and get too much influence from other regions. But I have yet to see an argument given for why Miami is not southern that does not also apply to New Orleans, or other big southern US cities like Atlanta or Houston. No one denies New Orleans being Southern, but the two share traits that make them unique.
The real question for this thread is what is the northernmost city with a SHARED HISTORY with the Southern US? While all American cities share a lengthy history with each other, after all we share a country, there were crucial moments that occurred that made defining cultural regions. Like New England is very well-defined as Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, why? Because in the 1600s and 1700s this landmass was owned by Great Britain while New York was owned by the Dutch as New Amsterdam at the time. Again - why are people upset that the South is defined by the 1800s Civil War and not the pre-US times for New England which is even older? The logic once again falters, because it's not based on anything actually sound, it's based on discriminatory "us vs them" logic in which the South is the oppressed and discriminated and the "us" is the privileged and respected group. People don't want to be in the perceived minority group, they want to keep their "elevated" status as a non-Southern American.
Pre-colonial times is what defined New England, but what other historical events defined other cultural regions of the US? The Western states were heavily defined by the Manifest Destiny is another example.
I been preaching this for a minute on why people deny Miami and the rest of South Florida to be included in the South.
Louisville acted like Birmingham, Alabama when the arctic front hit before the holidays. Apparently, the lack of quality housing stock with better insulation is very poor in most of the moderate to lower income areas of the city. In contrast, my better built 1970s era house in southern Indiana- I've never dripped water to prevent possible freezing of pipes in the winter even with subzero low temperatures.
Wikipedia says: At the outbreak of hostilities of the Civil War in April 1861, this location was part of Virginia and was the northernmost point in any slave state. Chester remains the northernmost point in the Southern United States.
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