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The Deep South is a descriptive category of cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the antebellum period. The Deep South was also commonly referred to as the Lower South or the "Cotton States".
Today, the Deep South is usually delineated as being those states and areas where things most often thought of as "Southern" exist in their most concentrated form.1
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Usage of the term
The term "Deep South" is defined in a variety of ways:
- Most definitions include the states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina.23
- The seven states that seceded from the United States before the firing on Fort Sumter and the start of the American Civil War, and originally formed the Confederate States of America. In order of secession they are: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Due to the migration patterns of the last half-century, large areas of Florida and Texas are often no longer included under the term. However, there are certain parts of these states, such as East Texas, and the Florida Panhandle, that retain cultural characteristics of the Deep South.4 Some scholars apply the term 'Deep South' to the trans-Appalachian states of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.
- While it can be referred to as part of the "Deep South," Florida is not usually considered "Southern" by residents of Deep South states due to the fact that 15% Florida's population are retired people from all over the country. Also, the culture is influenced by the huge Hispanic presence (20.1% of the population is Hispanic and 15.94% is White Hispanic). While Deep South states have a large Hispanic population, they are nowhere near Florida's in size.
Politics of the Deep South
For most of the 19th century and 20th century, the Deep South overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party, viewing the rival Republican Party as a Northern organization responsible for the American Civil War, which devastated the economy of the Old South. However, since the 1964 presidential election5 along with the Civil Rights Movement, the Deep South has tended to vote for the Republican candidate in presidential elections, except in the 1976 election when Georgia native Jimmy Carter received the Democratic nomination. Since the 1990s there has been a continued shift toward Republican candidates in most political venues; another Georgian, Republican Newt Gingrich, was elected Speaker of the House in 1995. Presidential elections in which the region diverged noticeably from the Upper South occurred in 1928, 1948, 1964, 1968, and, to a lesser extent, in 1952, 1956 and 2008. Mike Huckabee did well in the Deep South in 2008 Republican primaries (losing only South Carolina and Mississippi), but he was unsuccessful in clinching the nomination.
See also
References
- ^ "1001 Things Everyone Should Know About the South". John Reed and Dale Volberg Reed. Doubleday 1996
- ^ ""Deep South"". "TheFreeDictionary.com". Retrieved on 2007-01-18.
- ^ ""Deep South"". "Synonym.com". Retrieved on 2007-01-18.
- ^ "1001 Things Everyone Should Know About the South". John Reed and Dale Volberg Reed. Doubleday 1996
- ^ For many Southern white voters, Republican Dwight David Eisenhower first broke their voting behavior in the Presidential elections of 1952 and 1956, but with the Goldwater-Johnson election of 1964 a significant contingent of those same voters crossed the Rubicon into more-or-less permanized adherence to the Republican Party. Correspondingly, support for Republicans among Black voters continued eroding as it had started moving toward Democrats in the FDR election of 1936.
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