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Many regional geography texts treat the American Deep South and the Southeast Coast including Florida as two separate regions. Justify this division and explain why thedistinctiveness of the Deep South has become less marked in recent times?

First, a definitionis important: the Deep South comprises a region of the Southern United Statesthat includes the states of Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, andLouisiana, and Florida; these six states were the initial members of theConfederate States of America, which seceded from the Union in 1861, causingthe American Civil War. This is distinguished from the Old South, which werethe bloc of Southern states within the original 13-colony Union. The 'DeepSouth' is as much a socioeconomic and cultural moniker as it is a geographicalone. To the extent that Florida, and in some ways Georgia, have changedculturally and economically in the past 50 years, they are less easily lumpedin with the other states of the Deep South.

The history of theDeep South has been a deeply troubled one, the root being the racial tensionsbetween blacks and whites. Slavery was not abolished until 1863 in the UnitedStates and this only came in the midst of a bloody internecine conflict.Though the Civil War's official end came in 1865, the racism and animositybetween the Deep South and the other states of the Union have often simmeredjust below the boiling point. Individual Southern states and localmunicipalities within them effected a variety of ways to ensure that blacks,while officially equal citizens, were discriminated against in many ways.Literacy tests and poll taxes were put into place to discourage blacks fromvoting; separate dining, lodging, restroom, and educational facilities forblacks and whites - known as segregation -- were the norm in the Deep Southuntil racial tensions boiled over violently in the 1950s and 1960s, forcing thefederal government to intervene both militarily and legally. Forcedintegration, assisted in some cases by Federal troops, and new Federal lawscontained within the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, ushered in a new eraof racial equality in the Deep South, though the blight of poverty still hungheaviest over blacks within the region.

Simultaneously, inthe state of Florida, two interesting phenomena were transpiring in the 1950sand 1960s; one, the standard Deep South binary racial equation of blacks andwhites was changing drastically with the infusion of hundreds of thousands ofLatin American immigrants, most of whom were Cubans fleeing the oppressiveregime of Fidel Castro. The majority of these immigrants settled in the cityof Miami, which lies at the southernmost tip of the state of Florida, ageographic universe away from the Deep South. These Latinos brought their ownfeisty cultural identity and quickly shook up the racial and economic politicsof Florida. At the same time, Florida, particularly its Southern region, wasquickly becoming a favorite retirement spot for older Americans from theNorthern regions of the country, who - thanks the to social programs such asMedicare and Social Security - had the financial resources to seek warmer andmore leisurely settings for the latter years of their lives. Many of theseolder Americans were of Jewish faith, further adding to the cultural diversityof Southern Florida. By the 1980s, the twin metropolises of Miami and FortLauderdale, along with their surrounding suburbs, had become a teeming centerof sophisticated and culturally diverse urban life, where young, old, black,white, Latino, Catholic, Jewish, and traditional Deep South EvangelicalChristians all mixed together in an affluent setting vastly different from thepoor farmlands of the Deep South of the 1800s and 1900s.

The identity ofthe state of Georgia, meanwhile, was being transformed by the evolution of itslargest city, Atlanta, into a major urban metropolis. Though the city properitself only is home to approximately 450,000 people, the city plus thesurrounding residential and business-heavy suburbs are home to 4,500,000,making it one of the largest, most affluent metropolitan areas in the UnitedStates and an attractive location for an ever-increasing and diverse array ofnew businesses - and the resultant diversity of population that come along withthem. This is in distinct opposition to much of the rest of Georgia, whichretains the flawed, distinctive charm of the remainder of the Deep South, mostnotably its iconic seaside city of Savannah, inspiration for the novel and filmMidnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a vivid exploration of how thepast and present intersect to form the unusual sociocultural identity of themodern Deep South.

It is important topause and note here that the primary economy of the Deep South of the 1800s andearly 1900s was agrarian, particularly such crops as tobacco and sugar. In theminds of Southerners, the institution of slavery was an ongoing necessity topreserve this agrarian economic model. The North, by contrast, increasinglybenefited from an industrial and financial economy, experiencing both thehorrors and benefits of the Industrial Revolution, and was increasinglyintolerant of slavery, all the while receiving a wild influx of immigrants of adizzying array of ethnic backgrounds and the resultant eventual tolerance ofdiversity.

To the extent thatportions of Florida, mostly its southern region, and Georgia, particularlyAtlanta, have come to reflect a greater diversity of economies and cultures,they have evolved away from the stagnant binary cultural morass that stillcharacterizes much of the Deep South and grown to reflect either their ownunique, indigenous new cultures, or cultures that resemble the eclectic andprogressive Northern or Western urban cultures such as New York, Los Angeles,San Francisco, or Chicago. The northern and eastern portions of Florida are inmany ways still indistinguishable from the Deep South, as they have not seenthe same economic and cultural influxes seen in Miami and Atlanta. As theinevitable occurs - i.e., cultural minorities become the majority in the UnitedStates - and globalization brings economic diversity and regional economicspecializations become increasingly irrelevant, many other parts of the DeepSouth will find that their antebellum traditions - some good, some bad, willfade into history.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Egnal,Marc "Rethinking the Secession of the Lower South: The Clash of TwoGroups"

Civil War History - Volume 50, Number 3, September 2004, pp. 261-290

The Kent State University Press

Atlanta Fast Facts Metro Atlanta Chamberof Commerce, 2004, available from:

http://www.metroatlantachamber.com/macoc/home/atlantafacts.shtml

Davis, Allison, and John Dollard. DeepSouth: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1941.

Conaway, Laura, and James Ridgeway.Democracy in Chains: Slavery's Legacy Shackled the Black VoteAnd Cost GoreThousands of Ballots, The Village Voice, November 29-December 5, 2000.

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