South, The (USA)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Historically and culturally, the South is the most distinctive region of the United States. Once a center for African American slavery, the South is the only U.S. region to have fought for a separate national existence. Following defeat in the Civil War (1861–1865), poverty and legalized racial discrimination marked the southern states until the last decades of the twentieth century. While slavery and racial strife never dominated all parts of the South, they contributed to the economic, political, social, and cultural isolation of the entire region. As a result, W. J. Cash expressed a broad consensus when he called the South “not quite a nation within a nation, but the next thing to it” (1941, p. xlviii).

Like many other world regions, the South has no precise definition. It includes a variety of climates and geographical features, ranging from subtropical coastal swamps to the Appalachian Mountains, which include the highest peaks east of the Mississippi River. The border between Pennsylvania and Maryland (the Mason-Dixon Line) divides North from South traditionally, but does not define the entire region. Eleven states seceded to form the Confederate States of America in 1861: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. Four other slave states did not secede: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. The modern state of West Virginia broke away from Virginia during the Civil War, creating lasting disagreement over whether it should be considered southern. The U.S. Census defines the South as the former slave states (minus Missouri), plus Oklahoma and the District of Columbia. Accepting the reality that state lines have never circumscribed the cultural patterns of speech, food, politics, religion, and race relations that are widely associated with the South, the authoritative Encyclopedia of Southern Culture falls back on a circular definition: “‘The South’ is found wherever southern culture is found” (Wilson and Ferris 1989, p. xv).

The South became a discrete region by an extended process linked to African American slavery. Slaves worked in all the American colonies, but especially on plantations growing tobacco in Virginia and rice in South Carolina. By the time of the first federal census in 1790, slaves comprised 31 percent of the U.S. population south of Pennsylvania, but less than 2 percent elsewhere. With the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cultivation of the fiber expanded widely south of Virginia, spreading slavery and the plantation system across the southern interior and gradually tying the South together as the “Cotton Kingdom.”

Representatives of the free and slave states clashed in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, but regional selfconsciousness did not spread widely until after 1820, as southern whites reacted to a growing abolition movement in the North and to northern opposition to slavery’s expansion. In 1860 a northern majority elected an avowedly antislavery president, Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), prompting eleven slave states to leave the Union and form the Confederacy. Southern defeat in the ensuing Civil War brought the abolition of slavery, first by the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and more fully by the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1865).

During Reconstruction (1865–1877), native southern whites used violence and intimidation to regain power over their state governments and the ex-slaves. The plantation system continued under tenancy arrangements that left blacks and many whites largely impoverished and uneducated. Beginning in the 1890s, white Democrats used poll taxes and literacy tests to strip most black men of the right to vote, followed by laws requiring the strict segregation of the races in all public facilities. In response, millions of black southerners fled to find better opportunities in the North and West. Until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s brought new federal legislation, widespread poverty, legal segregation, black disfranchisement, and exclusive control by an all-white Democratic Party characterized the so-called Solid South. Before these reforms, unique social and political institutions—and the prolonged struggle to maintain them—made the South unmistakably different from the rest of the United States, and fed a strong regional identity, especially among whites.

Despite these dominant regional patterns, diverse regional subcultures have long flourished in the South. The Appalachians and similar patches of hill country did not support plantations, but sustained a distinct white folk culture that became the seedbed of modern country-and-western music. Equally distinct African American cultures developed in the largely black plantation districts. African cultural survivals, including the unique Gullah language, marked the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, while other black communities developed special musical traditions, especially New Orleans jazz and the Mississippi Delta blues. Lying between the mountains and the coastal lowlands, the Piedmont South fostered industrial development with urban centers like Atlanta and Charlotte.

Isolation and distinctiveness have encouraged southern stereotypes. Racial prejudice and exploitation encouraged images of both black inferiority and universal white racism. Violence, ignorance, and laziness have been attributed to southern whites and blacks alike. Plantation owners have been credited with aristocratic gentility, and poor whites scorned for hopeless degradation. The roots of these stereotypes are slowly giving way, but popular images only die gradually.

The South has changed rapidly since the end of World War II (1939–1945). Vigorous industrial recruitment, often founded on low wages, weak regulations, and hostility to labor unions, attracted outside industry and led to massive urban and suburban growth. The civil rights movement ended legalized segregation and stimulated a two-party political system, as millions of new black voters entered the Democratic Party while many whites switched to the resurgent Republicans. Southerners of both parties acquired leading roles in national politics, as Democrats won presidential elections with Jimmy Carter (1976) and Bill Clinton (1992 and 1996) and came close with Al Gore (2000), while southern Republicans like Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott, and Jesse Helms exercised a powerful conservative influence on Congress from the 1990s onward. Black migration reversed direction, lifting the region’s black population by 7.2 million between 1970 and 2000. Prosperity attracted millions of other newcomers as well, including northern-born whites and Hispanic immigrants, but the offshore flight of low-wage manufacturing has distressed many southern industrial communities.

Recent changes have led some observers to worry that the South may disappear as a distinct region, but change has come on top of deep-seated historical experiences that are likely to give distinct characteristics to southern development for a long time to come.

SEE ALSO Benjamin, Judah P.; Bluegrass; Blues; Civil Rights Movement, U.S.; Confederate States of America; Davis, Jefferson; Democratic Party, U.S.; Desegregation; Jazz; Jim Crow; Johnson, Lyndon B.; Kefauver, Estes; Key, V. O., Jr.; Lincoln, Abraham; Migration; Politics; Politics, Southern; Poll Tax; Reconstruction Era (U.S.); Republican Party; Segregation; Slavery; Southern Bloc; Southern Strategy; Stereotypes; Supreme Court, U.S.; Thurmond, Strom; U.S. Civil War

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cash, W. J. 1941. The Mind of the South. New York: Knopf.

Cobb, James C. 2005. Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity. New York: Oxford University Press.

Cooper, William J., Jr., and Thomas E. Terrill. 2002. The American South: A History. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Reed, John Shelton. 1974. The Enduring South: Subcultural Persistence in Mass Society. 2nd ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Wilson, Charles Reagan, and William Ferris, eds. 1989. The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Harry L. Watson

the South region of the United States embracing the southeastern and south-central parts of the country. Traditionally, all states S of the Mason-Dixon Line and the Ohio River (except West Virginia) make up the South—Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. The contemporary South, however, is generally regarded to be those states mentioned above minus Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Texas, and Oklahoma.

Geography, Economy, and Other Features

The South has long been a region apart, even though it is not isolated by any formidable natural barriers and is itself subdivided into many distinctive areas: the coastal plains along the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico; the Piedmont; the ridges, valleys, and high mountains bordering the Piedmont, especially the Great Smoky Mts. in North Carolina and Tennessee; areas of bluegrass, black-soil prairies, and clay hills west of the mountains; bluffs, floodplains, bayous, and delta lands along the Mississippi River; and W of the Mississippi, the interior plains and the Ozark Plateau.

The humid subtropical climate, however, is one unifying factor. Winters are neither long nor very cold, and no month averages below freezing. The long, hot growing season (nine months at its peak along the Gulf) and the fertile soil (much of it overworked or ruined by erosion) have traditionally made the South an agricultural region where such staples as tobacco, rice, and sugarcane have long flourished; citrus fruits, livestock, soybeans, and timber have gained in importance. Cotton, once the region's dominant crop, is now mostly grown in Texas, the Southwest, and California.

Since World War II, the South has become increasingly industrialized. High-technology (such as aerospace and petrochemical) industries have boomed, and there has been impressive growth in the service, trade, and finance sectors. The chief cities of the South are Atlanta, New Orleans, Charlotte, Miami, Memphis, and Jacksonville.

From William Byrd (1674–1744) to William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, the South has always had a strong regional literature. Its principal subject has been the Civil War, reflected in song and poetry from Paul Hamilton Hayne to Allen Tate and in novels from Thomas Nelson Page to Margaret Mitchell.

History

Seventeenth Century to the Civil War

The basic agricultural economy of the Old South, which was abetted by the climate and the soil, led to the introduction (1617) of Africans as a source of cheap labor under the twin institutions of the plantation and slavery . Slavery might well have expired had not the invention of the cotton gin (1793) given it a firmer hold, but even so there would have remained the problem of racial tension. Issues of race have been central to the history of the South. Slavery was known as the "peculiar institution" of the South and was protected by the Constitution of the United States.

The Missouri Compromise (1820–21) marked the rise of Southern sectionalism, rooted in the political doctrine of states' rights , with John C. Calhoun as its greatest advocate. When differences with the North, especially over the issue of the extension of slavery into the federal territories, ultimately appeared insoluble, the South turned (1860–61) the doctrine of states' rights into secession (or independence), which in turn led inevitably to the Civil War . Most of the major battles and campaigns of the war were fought in the South, and by the end of the war, with slavery abolished and most of the area in ruins, the Old South had died.

Reconstruction to World War II

The period of Reconstruction following the war set the South's political and social attitude for years to come. During this difficult time radical Republicans, African Americans, and so-called carpetbaggers and scalawags ruled the South with the support of federal troops. White Southerners, objecting to this rule, resorted to terrorism and violence and, with the aid of such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan , drove the Reconstruction governments from power. The breakdown of the plantation system during the Civil War gave rise to sharecropping, the tenant-farming system of agriculture that still exists in areas of the South. The last half of the 19th cent. saw the beginning of industrialization in the South, with the introduction of textile mills and various industries.

The troubled economic and political life of the region in the years between 1880 and World War II was marked by the rise of the Farmers' Alliance, Populism, and Jim Crow laws and by the careers of such Southerners as Tom Watson , Theodore Bilbo , Benjamin Tillman , and Huey Long . During the 1930s and 40s, thousands of blacks migrated from the South to Northern industrial cities.

The Contemporary South

Since World War II the South has experienced profound political, economic, and social change. Southern reaction to the policies of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society caused the emergence of a genuine two-party system in the South. Many conservative Southern Democrats (such as Strom Thurmond ) became Republicans because of disagreements over civil rights, the Vietnam War, and other issues. During the 1990s, Republican strength in the South increased substantially. After the 1994 elections, Republicans held a majority of the U.S. Senate and House seats from Southern states; Newt Gingrich , a Georgia Republican, became Speaker of the House.

During the 1950s and 60s the civil-rights movement, several key Supreme Court decisions, and federal legislation ended the legal segregation of public schools, universities, transportation, businesses, and other establishments in the South, and helped blacks achieve more adequate political representation. The process of integration was often met with bitter protest and violence. Patterns of residential segregation still exist in much of the South, as they do throughout the United States. The influx of new industries into the region after World War II made the economic life of the South more diversified and more similar to that of other regions of the United States.

The portions of the South included in the Sun Belt have experienced dramatic growth since the 1970s. Florida's population almost doubled between 1970 and 1990 and Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina have also grown considerably. Economically, the leading metropolitan areas of the South have become popular destinations for corporations seeking favorable tax rates, and the region's relatively low union membership has attracted both foreign and U.S. manufacturing companies. In the rural South, however, poverty, illiteracy, and poor health conditions often still predominate.

Bibliography

See works by C. Eaton, H. W. Odum, and U. B. Phillips; W. H. Stephenson and E. M. Coulter, ed., A History of the South (10 vol., 1947–73); F. B. Simkins and C. P. Roland, A History of the South (4th ed. 1972); C. V. Woodward, Origins of the New South (1971) and The Strange Career of Jim Crow (3d rev. ed. 1974); D. R. Goldfield, Cotton Fields and Skyscrapers (1982); E. and M. Black, Politics and Society in the South (1987); C. R. Wilson and W. Ferris, ed., The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (1989); D. R. Goldfield, The South for New Southerners (1991).

South, The, a diverse region including all or parts of the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas. Varying climates, soils, and topography have produced a multiplicity of landscapes: the tidewater plain along the Atlantic coast, the rolling Piedmont of central Virginia and the Carolinas, the Appalachian Mountains ranging down to Georgia and Alabama, the piney woods along the Gulf coast across to East Texas, and the rich soils of the Mississippi River delta and Alabama Black Belt. The region is defined less by geography than by its history and culture, which, while also diverse, constitute the core of regional identity. The South's population, its economic relationship to the rest of the country, and its particular historical experience have been sufficiently distinctive to shape both its identity and its place in the nation.

The French and Spanish explored and laid claims along the Gulf coast and the Mississippi River, and the Spanish established the earliest permanent European settlement at St. Augustine in 1565. The colony at Jamestown (1607) led to significant English settlement in the Middle Atlantic region. Later settlements by the Scots‐Irish and Germans in the Piedmont, by French Huguenots in South Carolina, and by Acadians, or Cajuns (descendants of French‐speaking farmers deported from Canada's maritime provinces by the British in the 1750s), in Louisiana, added variety to the European population. A most significant migration was the forced settlement of enslaved Africans, beginning as early as 1619.

Slaves accounted for as much as a third of the population in some southern colonies by 1750. Their presence, and the predominance of agriculture—cotton, rice, tobacco, sugar, and indigo—delineated much of the region's character and future. Although at the mercy of their masters, slaves, as well as free blacks, preserved some elements of their cultures and the dignity of work and family life. Most southern whites did not own slaves, but the political and economic influence of large plantation agriculture, and the controls necessary to sustain a system of chattel slavery, permeated southern society by the beginning of the Antebellum Era.

The indigenous Indian tribes in the region—Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole—were coerced into treaties relinquishing their lands in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi, and were forcibly removed, over the “Trail of Tears,” to Indian Territory in Oklahoma during the 1830s. A Seminole band retreated to the Everglades where they resisted resettlement, but were nearly exterminated by 1845.

Tensions over slavery and sectional self‐determination led to heightened southern nationalism and, eventually, to the Civil War and the economic dislocation that followed. The Reconstruction Era and its aftermath laid the foundations for the South's return to the national fold, but did not bring racial reconciliation. The end of slavery provided new opportunities for African Americans, but the post–Reconstruction Era brought a new system of racial segregation that insured continued white dominance.

Economic development and urban growth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries inspired talk of a “New South.” Ambitious ventures in raw‐materials processing, mining, and manufacturing, and the rapid growth of interior cities like Atlanta, Birmingham, and Nashville, narrowed the gap between the region and the rest of the country. But the southern economy retained a dependent relationship on the more extensive and sophisticated industries and financial institutions of the Northeast and Middle West. Consequently, by the Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt identified the region as “the nation's number one economic problem.” In Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans memorably evoked the harsh life of Depression‐Era southern sharecroppers.

Even more dramatic social and economic changes after World War II heralded a revolution in southern race relations that culminated in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and fractured the infrastructure of white supremacy. These events again underscored the significance of southern history and culture in the national story. The last quarter of the twentieth century witnessed unprecedented demographic, technological, and economic changes in the South, and brought it more within the national mainstream as part of the rapidly developing “Sunbelt.” The modern South's interstate highway system, major businesses, modern communications networks, professional sports teams, and large numbers of black elected officials all testified to the extent of these changes, as did the fact that this region supplied four U.S. presidents between 1960 and 2000: Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George Bush, and Bill Clinton. Despite the transformations, however, the South retained many of its traditional values and burdens. Regional folklore, traditional music, and a powerful strain of evangelical Protestantism all helped shape this legacy.

Southern culture and identity were embedded, too, in a flourishing literature that included such Antebellum Era writers as Edgar Allan Poe and reached its heights in such twentieth‐century writers and playwrights as William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and William Styron. From the rich folklore and humor of the southern frontier in the eighteenth century to the oral traditions of black slaves to the blues, gospel music, and jazz, as well as the florid rhetoric of the southern pulpit, the region's literature and popular culture drew strength from the moral challenges of slavery and the harsh realities of southern poverty. Southern history has been a deep well that replenished the imagination and cast a unique perspective on the nation's experience.
See also African American Religion; Baptists; Cherokee Cases; Cotton Industry; Depressions, Economic; Economic Development; French Settlements in North America; Gospel Music, African American; Indian History and Culture: From 1500 to 1800; Indian History and Culture: From 1800 to 1900; Indian Removal Act; Regionalism; Religion; Seminole Wars; Sharecropping and Tenantry; Spanish Settlements in North America; Tobacco Industry.

Bibliography

C. Vann Woodward , Origins of the New South, 1877–1913, 1951.
Wilbur J. Cash , The Mind of the South, 1941.
Jack Bass and Thomas Terrill, eds., The American South Comes of Age, 1986.
Edward L. Ayers , The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction, 1992.
Numan V. Bartley , The New South, 1945–1980, 1995.
Carole E. Hill and Patricia D. Bearer, eds., Cultural Diversity in the U.S. South: Anthropological Contributions to a Region in Transition, 1998.
Stephen David Kantrowicz , Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy, 2000.

Blaine A. Brownell

south the direction towards the point of the horizon 90° clockwise from east, or the point on the horizon itself. In literary contexts, it is often contrasted as a region with the more temperate north. From the late 20th century, south has been used as a collective term for the industrially and economically less advanced countries of the world, typically situated to the south of the industrialized nations.
go south (chiefly in US usage) deteriorate, fail, or fall in value.
South Bank the southern bank of the Thames, noted for the cultural complexes and public gardens developed between Westminster and Blackfriars bridges for and since the Festival of Britain in 1951. South Bank is also used with reference to the policy of the Anglican diocese of Southwark to re-express traditional beliefs and practices in ways that would make them better suited to contemporary life.
South Park an American cartoon series (1998– ), featuring the (often scatological humour) of a group of third-grade boys, Waspy Stan, Kenny, Eric, and Kyle. Despite compulsory late-night showing for its strong language, the series became a popular hit with young viewers.
South Sea Bubble a speculative boom in the shares of the South Sea Company in 1720 which ended with the failure of the company and a general financial collapse.

See also South Pole at pole2, the solid South.

south / sou[unvoicedth]/ • n. (usu. the south) 1. the direction toward the point of the horizon 90° clockwise from east, or the point on the horizon itself: the breeze came from the south they trade with the countries to the south. ∎  the compass point corresponding to this. 2. the southern part of the world or of a specified country, region, or town: he was staying in the south of France. ∎  (usu. the South) the southern states of the U.S. 3. (South) Bridge the player sitting opposite and partnering North. • adj. 1. lying toward, near, or facing the south: the south coast. ∎  (of a wind) blowing from the south. 2. of or denoting the southern part of a specified area, city, or country or its inhabitants: Telegraph Hill in South Boston. • adv. to or toward the south: they journeyed south along the valley it is handily located ten miles south of Baltimore. • v. [intr.] move toward the south: the wind southed a point or two. ∎  (of a celestial body) cross the meridian. PHRASES: down south inf. to or in the south of a country. south by east (or west) between south and south-southeast (or south-southwest).

south·ing / ˈsou[voicedth]ing/ • n. distance traveled or measured southward, esp. at sea. ∎  a figure or line representing southward distance on a map. ∎  Astron. the transit of a celestial object, esp. the sun, across the meridian due south of the observer. ∎  Astron. the angular distance of a star or other object south of the celestial equator.

south adv., adj. OE.; sb XIII. OE. sūð = OS. sūth (LG. sud), OHG. sunt, ON. (with r-suffix) suð (:- *sunþr).
So southerly (-LY1) XVI. southern. OE. sūðerne. Also comp. southeast, southwest, southward(s) OE.

southing ˈsowṮH̱iŋ n. distance traveled or measured southward, especially at sea.

South as affix, see main name, e.g. for South Acre (Norfolk) see Acre.

south •Louth, mouth, mouth-to-mouth, south •bad-mouth • bigmouth • loudmouth •goalmouth • blabbermouth •motormouth

southing •pennyfarthing • plaything •silversmithing • anything •everything • northing • nothing •something • rebirthing • farthing •scathing • sheathing •tithing, writhing •southing • clothing • underclothing •Worthing • carving • woodcarving •delving •craving, engraving, paving, raving, saving, shaving •self-deceiving, unbelieving, weaving •living, misgiving, thanksgiving, unforgiving •skydiving • piledriving • coving •approving, reproving, unmoving •unloving •Irving, serving, unswerving •time-serving • lapwing • waxwing •batwing • redwing • lacewing •beeswing • forewing • downswing •outswing • viewing • upswing •underwing • phrasing • stargazing •trailblazing • hellraising • unpleasing •rising, surprising •self-aggrandizing • uncompromising •unpatronizing • uprising •enterprising • appetizing •Dowsing, housing •unimposing •amusing, confusing, musing