Articles

Heading South: Population Boom Shows Region's Clout

By Bob Dart
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
April 21, 2005

WASHINGTON — Look out, y'all! Within three decades, nearly four in every 10 Americans will be Southerners, the Census Bureau estimates in a report to be released today.

It's a demographic shift already well under way that has seen Southern symbols such as Cajun food and NASCAR go nationwide — and brought to the South scores of newcomers who are establishing their own cultural touchstones.

Growing like kudzu, the South is expected to have a population of about 143.3 million in 2030. In percentage terms, that means 39.4 percent of the U.S. population will live in the South. With another quarter in the West, that leaves just over a third in the once dominant Midwest and Northeast.

It's a continuation of the current growth trend, which began accelerating about 50 years ago and saw the proportion of population in the South boom to more than three in 10, or 35 percent, in 2000. The West grew even faster, though it accounted for a smaller share of the total.

Three Sun Belt states — Florida, California and Texas — will account for nearly half of U.S. population growth between 2000 and 2030, the Census Bureau projects.

Driving the change has been a migration from the so-called Rust Belt states. Previous census reports showed that the largest sources of migration to Georgia between 1995 and 2000 included Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, while New York was the No. 1 source of new residents in Florida.

The motives for the move have generally been economic and cultural, with the climate and a desire to be closer to relatives who previously moved south also factors. All were part of the decision for Peg Haering, who moved with her family from Madison, Wis., to Atlanta in March.

Haering, now a public policy adviser with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Atlanta offers many of the advantages of other big cities like New York and Washington, but with nice weather and friendly people.

"We looked at employment opportunities, professional growth, we looked at the tangibles and the intangibles," she said. "We kept coming back to Atlanta as having the things we want: access to arts and culture and a friendly climate."

She said her family also wanted to get away from the cold but didn't want a "one-note environment" without seasons.

"You can still have a winter here, but it's not going to hurt," she said.

Haering said concern over her and her husband's parents also drove their decision. Both sets live in Florida, and she said not having to worry about flight availability in an emergency takes a big load off their mind.

The continuing southward population shift will affect everything from politics to religion to cuisine to literature.

"This is probably good news for Republicans," said Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

'Solid South' Loves GOP

For more than a century after Reconstruction, the term "Solid South" referred to the region's Democratic loyalties. But entering the 21st century, the South is solidly in the GOP camp, and its growing clout has been vital in establishing the current GOP dominance in Washington.

"That's the big historical switch," said Black. "It has changed American politics."

Adding population faster than other regions, the South is picking up congressional seats and presidential electoral votes, explained Black. "It means that the Democrats can't afford to position themselves in ways that alienate themselves from Southerners."

The shift means more folks migrating to the region will be exposed to grits, boiled peanuts, sweet tea, collard greens, black-eyed peas, corn bread, crawfish, chicken-fried steak and other delights of the Southern diet, cultural chroniclers observe. More people will live within driving distance of the Alamo and the Grand Ole Opry. And more people will picture their neighbors when they hear Jeff Foxworthy's "You might be a redneck if . . ."

The population shift "means much of America's legacy is rooted in the South — culturally, economically and politically," said William Ferris, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "In no areas of our country has the South not played a central role. Economically, there's Wal-Mart, Holiday Inn, Coca-Cola. Look at the national interest in country music, the blues, stock car racing. Certainly Southern culture has blanketed the nation."

But it means the notion of what's Southern will undergo dramatic changes, too, particularly with an increasing share of newcomers to the South hailing from Latin America and Asia.

"I foresee an upsurge of immigrant literature in the South," said Suzanne Jones, an English professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia.

Infusion of New Cultures

In the '70s and '80s, writers such as Amy Tan were describing the immigrant experience in California, she said. "But we're already seeing these newcomers writing about the South."

Examples she cited include Lan Cao's book "Monkey Bridge," about Vietnamese in Virginia; Susan Choi's "The Foreign Student," about a Korean exchange student at Sewanee — the University of the South, in Tennessee; and Gustavo Perez Firmat's memoir, "Next Year in Cuba," about growing up in Cuba and moving to Florida.

The influx of newcomers will also alter Sundays in what has been the most religious region, predicted James Goff, a history professor at Appalachian State University who specializes in the South, evangelism, Pentecostalism and Southern gospel music.

The Catholic Church is growing in the South, he said. And the religious atmosphere that hangs like summer humidity may diffuse some in the region where historian John Shelton Reed observed that even folks who don't go to church know what church they're not going to every Sunday.

"But I wouldn't write an obituary to the Bible Belt just yet," Goff said. "The evangelical Christianity of the South has an amazing ability to adapt."

There are many Pentecostals as well as Catholics among the Hispanic newcomers, he noted. And the fundamentalists have been quick to use new technology to attract members.

There have been a succession of "New Souths" since Atlanta Daily Herald publisher Henry Grady coined the phrase more than a century ago, said Ferris.

"But I think the basic connection to what Eudora Welty calls a 'sense of place' is and always will be a central part of Southern life," he said. "For the family that moved in last week or the family that moved in centuries ago, that will never change."

—Staff writer Teresa Borden contributed to this article.

© 2005 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. For more information, visit www.ajc.com.

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