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The South
The most populous U.S. Census region
The South is the most populous of the four U.S. Census regions - sixteen states plus the District of Columbia, stretching from Maryland and Delaware down through Florida and west to Texas and Oklahoma. The Census Bureau splits it into the South Atlantic, East South Central, and West South Central divisions. Shaped historically by plantation agriculture, slavery, the Confederacy, and the civil rights movement, the South carries one of the strongest regional identities in the country.
Its geography runs from the southern Appalachians and the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains to the Mississippi Delta and the edge of the Great Plains in Texas. Warm and humid, with a long growing season, it was for centuries overwhelmingly agricultural but has become the fastest-growing part of the nation, its booming Sun Belt metros - Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Miami - drawing migration from across the country and abroad.