Maybe this isn't true for everyone but in the parts of the United States that I have lived in Mississippi and Alabama have an extremely poor reputation as backwards and impoverished as well as virtually indistinguishable. How could one or both of these states be seen as a pillar of American arts & culture? My two ideas were either a) during the Civil War one of these states sees a massive slave uprising that leaves it freeman controlled after the war and slowly evolves to be a kind of super-Harlem or b) during a nuclear war Mississippi and Alabama are left relatively unscathed making them a major destination of refugees and thus one of the first places in the country to start rebuilding.