Culture of The Southern United States - People

People

The predominant culture of the South has its origins with the settlement of the region by English colonists. 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 larges 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. They were often called "crackers", a term associated with the cowboys of Georgia and Florida. Before the American Revolution, the term was applied by the English, as a derogatory epithet for the non-elite Scots-Irish settlers of the southern backcountry. As one wrote, "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." Most Southerners today are of partial or majority English and Scots-Irish ancestry. In previous censuses, an overwhelming majority of Southerners identified as being of English or mostly English ancestry with 19,618,370 self-identifying as "English" on the 1980 census, followed by 3,679,277 identifying as German or mostly German. 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 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.

The other primary population group in the South is made up of the African American descendants of the slaves brought into the South. African Americans comprise the United States' second-largest racial minority, accounting for 12.1 percent of the total population according to the 2000 census. Despite Jim Crow era outflow to the North (see Great Migration (African American)), the majority of the black population has remained concentrated in the southern states, and blacks have been returning to the South in large numbers since the end of formal segregation (see New Great Migration).

Other ethnic groups 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.. Much of the population of Louisiana and coastal Mississippi and Alabama traces its primary ancestry to French colonists of the 18th century. Also important is the French community of New Orleans, Louisiana dating back to the 1880s, while the city and nearby Gulf Coast area also attracted waves of Chinese or Filipino immigrants and Vietnamese refugees in the late 20th century.