Culture of the Southern United States
The culture of the Southern United States, Southern culture, or Southern heritage, is a subculture of the United States. From its many cultural influences, the South developed its own unique customs, dialects, arts, literature, cuisine, dance, and music.[2] The combination of its unique history and the fact that many Southerners maintain—and even nurture—an identity separate from the rest of the country has led to it being one of the most studied and written-about regions of the United States.
During the 1600s to mid-1800s, the central role of agriculture and slavery during the colonial period and antebellum era economies made society stratified according to land ownership. This landed gentry made culture in the early Southern United States differ from areas north of the Mason–Dixon line and west of the Appalachians. The upland areas of the South were characterized by yeoman farmers who worked on their small landed property with few or no slaves, while the lower-lying elevations and Deep South was a society of more plantations worked by African slave labor. Events such as the First Great Awakening (1730s–1750s), would strengthen Protestantism in the South and United States as a whole. Communities would often develop strong attachment to their churches as the primary community institution.
People[edit]
Anglo Americans[edit]
In the time of their arrival, the predominant cultural influence on the Southern states was that of the English colonists who established the original English colonies in the region.[5] In the 17th century, most were of Southern English origins, mostly from regions such as Kent, East Anglia and the West Country who settled mostly on the coastal regions of the South but pushed as far inland as the Appalachian mountains by the 18th century. In the 18th century, large groups of Scots lowlanders, Northern English and Ulster-Scots (later called the Scots-Irish) settled in Appalachia and the Piedmont. Following them were larger numbers of English indentured servants from across the English Midlands and Southern England, they would be the largest group to settle in the Southern Colonies during the colonial period.[6][7][8][9] They were often called "crackers", a derogatory epithet applied to rural, non-elite whites of south Georgia and north Florida.[10] Before the American Revolution, the term was applied by the English, as a derogatory epithet for the non-elite settlers of the southern backcountry. This usage can be found in a passage from a letter to the Earl of Dartmouth, "I should explain ... what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascals on the frontiers of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode."[10] Most European Southerners today are of partial or majority English and Scots-Irish ancestry.[11] In previous censuses, over a third of Southern responders identified as being of English or partly English ancestry[7][8] with 19,618,370 self-identifying as "English" on the 1980 census, followed by 12,709,872 identifying as Irish, 11,054,127 as Afro-American, and 10,742,903 as German.[7][8][12] It should also be noted that those who did identify themselves of German ancestry were almost exclusively found in the northern border areas of the region which are adjacent to the American Mid-West. Those from the Tidewater area of Virginia and the Tidewater region of North Carolina identified themselves almost exclusively as of English origins, while those from the Piedmont areas were a mixture of English, Scotch-Irish, Scottish and Irish origins. South Georgia has a large Irish presence, the ancestors of whom were largely at one time Roman Catholic; however, many were converted to various Protestant sects due to the lack of a missionary presence of the Catholic Church in the 18th and 19th centuries. The predominance of Irish surnames in South Georgia has been noted by American historians for some time. Meanwhile, a community of Scottish highlanders settled around what is now Fayetteville in North Carolina. Gaelic was spoken in this region into the nineteenth century.
People of many nationalities established communities in the American South. Some examples are the German American population of the Edwards Plateau of Texas, whose ancestors arrived in the region in the 1840s. German cultural influence continues to be felt in cities like New Braunfels, Texas near Austin and San Antonio.[13] Much of the population of East Texas, Louisiana, coastal Mississippi and Alabama, and Florida traces its primary ancestry to French and/or Spanish colonists of the 18th century. Also important is the French community of New Orleans dating back to the 1880s.
Network television shows set in the Southern United States:
1950s–1971:
Following the boom of television in the 1950s, many shows were set in the South and/or became very popular with Southerners. They included:
1976–present:
By 1971, sponsors had shifted for this formula and CBS consequently cancelled all of its Southern shows.[109] (Only Hee Haw survived, in syndication.) In 1976, Jimmy Carter was elected as the first President of the United States from the Deep South subregion. The election resulted in reporters swarming into Carter's small southern town of Plains, Georgia. Speculation about his lifestyle and Southern Baptist faith, renewed interest in Southern culture.[110]
A new crop of television shows followed within the next decade, such as:
In addition, network television shows set in the South since 1990 include:
Critics point out that some of these shows and films, stereotype Southerners as "hapless hicks"[112] or "a universally simple and often silly group of inhabitants",[109] especially in contrast to the far more complex literary portrayals, and argue that they do not fairly represent Southerners' culture.
Many anime characters with Kansai accents, speak with Southern accents in English-language adaptations.