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The Deep South
The historic cotton heart of the South
The Deep South is the core of the American South - the lower-tier states most defined by plantation agriculture, slavery, and the Confederacy, usually counted as Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Built on cotton grown across the rich Black Belt soils, it was the center of the antebellum slave economy and, a century later, the central battleground of the civil rights movement, from Montgomery to Selma to Birmingham.
Its warm, humid lowlands run from the Atlantic coast across the Gulf plain to the Mississippi Delta. The region gave the world an outsized share of American music - the blues, jazz, gospel, and soul - along with a celebrated literary tradition and a distinctive cuisine. It remains the cultural heartland of African American history and of a deeply rooted Southern identity.