Deep South

The Deep South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states most dependent on plantation-type agriculture and considered slave societies during the pre–Civil War period. The Deep South was also commonly referred to as the Lower South or the Cotton States, for their production of cotton as the primary commodity crop.

Before the out-migrations from the Deep South during the first half of the 20th century, African-descended peoples, whose ancestry also often included the British Isles, comprised the majority of the population in numerous counties and some states. Today, the Deep South is usually delineated as being those states and areas where the cultural elements most often thought of as "Southern" exist in their most concentrated form.

The term "Deep South" is defined in a variety of ways:

Though often used in history books to refer to the seven states that originally formed the Confederacy, the term "Deep South" did not come into general usage until long after the Civil War ended. Up until that time, "Lower South" was the primary designation for those states. When "Deep South" first began to gain mainstream currency in print in the middle of the 20th century, it applied to the states and areas of Georgia, southern Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, north Louisiana, and East Texas, all historic areas of cotton plantations and slavery. This was the part of the South many considered the "most Southern".

Later, the general definition expanded to include all of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and often taking in bordering areas of East Texas and North Florida. In its broadest application today, the Deep South is considered to be "an area roughly coextensive with the old cotton belt from eastern North Carolina through South Carolina west into East Texas, with extensions north and south along the Mississippi".Houston is the largest city of the Deep South region.

European Americans or whites in every part of the Deep South except for southern Louisiana have often identified as having predominately English ancestry, but numerous Irish and Scots-Irish immigrants and migrants also entered the region. They sometimes served as overseers on plantations. In the 1980 census, of those people who identified solely by one European national ancestry, most European Americans identified as being of English ancestry in every Southern state except Louisiana, where more people identified as having French ancestry.

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