AHC: Keep southern states more culturally southern

So I've heard people say that Virginia and Florida aren't really a part of the South culturally.

I know they were for a long time but I don't know what caused the change.

I know North Florida is still southern and I heard VA is still pretty much the south outside of northern virginia close to DC

So I was wondering what would have to happen to make them as southern as Georgia or Mississippi.

Bonus points if they aren't poor

Bonus bonus points if you can get Maryland and Delaware
 
So I've heard people say that Virginia and Florida aren't really a part of the South culturally.

I know they were for a long time but I don't know what caused the change.

I know North Florida is still southern and I heard VA is still pretty much the south outside of northern virginia close to DC

So I was wondering what would have to happen to make them as southern as Georgia or Mississippi.

Bonus points if they aren't poor

Bonus bonus points if you can get Maryland and Delaware

Avoid WWII and the following suburbanization/mass migration of people.
 
Stop mass migration into Florida. Only one in three floridans are native to the state.

Northern Virginia is probably the same with a lot of dc workers resident there.

I believe florida has no state income tax. Maybe if they had one there would be less retirees and evokes migrating there.
 
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I would also suggest you have Disney World get built someplace else.

WRT Maryland, I live in Maryland, southern Maryland is still pretty southern (which makes sense, that's where the tobacco plantations were).
 

Mr. House

Banned
A more brutal Civil War leads to blacks getting an ethno-state like say the State of Lincoln carved out of the Mississippi River Delta. Having a bastion from Jim Crow, Black Southern and Native Southern culture is given a geographic space to flourish for over a hundred years. Things like the Harlem Renaissance or Black Wall Street happen but earlier and more sustained.

White southern culture surrounding the State of Lincoln becomes even more reactionary/lost causish than OTL but the actual Jim Crow isn't worse due to the economics of labor.

I expect the Great Migration to still happen although with such plentiful and cheap black labor already organized and ready to hop state borders at a moments notice to Lincoln to *not* be in the American Apartheid, White Colonial Edition, they may set up shop in Lincoln more so than expected. Profits are profits after all.

Past that point I think these butterflys are more than enough to have the South keep a more distinct culture up to ATL present day.
 
I know they were for a long time but I don't know what caused the change.
Mass migration from other parts of the country to Florida and the DC metro area.
So I was wondering what would have to happen to make them as southern as Georgia or Mississippi.
Difficult with a post-1900 POD. Undeveloped southern Florida is an obvious migration target as soon as you get air conditioning and the Sun Belt gets going, particularly for people from colder climates, and unless you can massively throttle the growth of the US federal government VA is going to end up with large numbers of people from other parts of the country drawn in by government and government-adjacent jobs.
Bonus points if they aren't poor
Also difficult, as VA's wealth is largely due to the government stuff that brought in people from outside of the South in the first place, and it's hard to imagine things that will stop people from moving to Florida (not a particularly rich state to begin with) that won't leave it poorer than IOTL.
Bonus bonus points if you can get Maryland and Delaware
MD has the same issues as Virginia re:the federal government, but it has the further issue of having its own major city in Baltimore, which will cause it to lean leftward and might shift the state enough in that direction for people to consider it "not really" part of the south on those grounds even without the DC suburbs. Similarly, it's difficult to imagine Delaware escaping Philadelphia's orbit.
 
A more brutal Civil War leads to blacks getting an ethno-state like say the State of Lincoln carved out of the Mississippi River Delta. Having a bastion from Jim Crow, Black Southern and Native Southern culture is given a geographic space to flourish for over a hundred years. Things like the Harlem Renaissance or Black Wall Street happen but earlier and more sustained.

White southern culture surrounding the State of Lincoln becomes even more reactionary/lost causish than OTL but the actual Jim Crow isn't worse due to the economics of labor.

I expect the Great Migration to still happen although with such plentiful and cheap black labor already organized and ready to hop state borders at a moments notice to Lincoln to *not* be in the American Apartheid, White Colonial Edition, they may set up shop in Lincoln more so than expected. Profits are profits after all.

Past that point I think these butterflys are more than enough to have the South keep a more distinct culture up to ATL present day.

Wouldn't this make the South more not the South? The mixing of White and Black culture and population could be argued to be what makes the South the South.
 
Aren't a lot of people from New York moving to Charlotte?

Yes, though the exodus from the North to the South started cranking up around a century after the war and as continued ever since. The South did desperately want capital after the Civil War and went through a hundred years of economic stagnation due to that lack of capital. After WW2 northerners started flowing in large numbers to the South bringing capital, but also fundamentally changing the South's culture. The biggest blow to Southern culture was the past generation through of people who have less taught in the traditions of historical culture, but to the monolithic cultural identity one sees on TV or film. Also, schools in the past few decades got out of the business of teaching cultural traditions.

I would say the most likely way to continue Southern culture would have been for the South to create its own entertainment industry in the early 20th century the way Japan has its own thriving entertainment industry that preserves its cultural traditions.

If I were to put it down to one word that consumed the regional culture of the South it wouldn't be migration it would be Hollywood. Northerners who came South in the late 19th century and early 20th century were subsumed by the region's culture and over time their families became culturally a part of the region. That probably would have happened with the post WW2 wave as well if TV and films mostly made in California didn't at pretty much the same time start to became an omnipresent purveyor of culture in the region.
 
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Or too expensive for household use.

I was thinking something along the lines of air conditioning as well. From my understanding, a lot of the south was effectively a third world country in terms of economic development prior to the widespread use of air conditioning.
 

Mr. House

Banned
Wouldn't this make the South more not the South? The mixing of White and Black culture and population could be argued to be what makes the South the South.
The population would still be mixed. Within the State of Lincoln there would be whites. All southern blacks wouldn't migrate to Lincoln and would remain under Jim Crow etc.

Not only that but with a Black Supermajority State that can't be "redeemed" I would expect to see a lot more powerful Neo-Confederate Nationalism. (Of course in the ATL in which Blacks get a U.S. state/homeland the Feds would probably bust up the Planter Class and might kneecap all that. That is to say I doubt the white class system would be the same as OTL.)

It would be a distinct southern culture from that of the north that is for sure.
 
Also difficult, as VA's wealth is largely due to the government stuff that brought in people from outside of the South in the first place, and it's hard to imagine things that will stop people from moving to Florida (not a particularly rich state to begin with) that won't leave it poorer than IOTL.

Henry flagler did a lot to build up South Florida and drain the swamps, maybe have him not bother or have TR try and protect it more would do a lot for Florida, maybe for VA have more Virginians fill the DC metro jobs
 
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Aren't a lot of people from New York moving to Charlotte?
That is what I have heard. I don't know if the pandemic has increased that migration; I have a feeling it has.

Here in Gastonia we had a bagel shop open up a month ago. A Hispanic family that came down from the NYC area. It isn't just bankers and retirees.
 
Stop mass migration into Florida. Only one in three floridans are native to the state.

Northern Virginia is probably the same with a lot of dc workers resident there.

I believe florida has no state income tax. Maybe if they had one there would be less retirees and evokes migrating there.
Unfortunately Florida still has good weather, old people do not like the winter
 
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