What do you think is the cultural capital of the South? Imo for the whole thing it’s Nashville, but more specifically for the Carolinas, GA, and East TN it’s Atlanta, and for West TN, MS, AR, and LA it’s either New Orleans or Memphis (Middle TN and Alabama it’s Nashville all around). What do you think?

49 comments

  2. I’d say Atlanta over all (central-ish, economic hub, transportation hub, media hub, and music hub for rap music specifically) but with major secondary nodes in Memphis, Nashville, and New Orleans. Could make an argument for St Louis or Louisville as additional secondary nodes if we’re talking more cultural “south” and not geographic, or Miami if we’re going geographic and not cultural.

  4. It’s Atlanta.

    Nashville is the capital of Country Music, but there is a lot Southerns that don’t a care thing about Country Music. Many actively dislike it.

  5. Atlanta has basically turned into “Hollywood South” with so much of the film/tv industries and hip hop coming out of there.

  6. Atlanta first and most obviously.

    New Orleans second.

    Nashville has an importance to the white south and Memphis to the black south, neither one matter to the other group.

    Houston has a bigger cultural output than any city in the South but Atlanta, but it’s only partially southern, so I would give it Texas’ cultural capital, not the south’s.

  7. I’m biased because I’m from Georgia, but it’s undeniably Atlanta for me. I love NOLA, but it’s its own thing that doesn’t resemble the rest of the South in a lot of ways.

  8. Well we don’t really have one, Because we’re a polycentric society.

    But I think that the closest one would be Atlanta, which is sort of the most significant city in the territory that would be considered the old south.

    However that’s not exactly how culture works in the United States. The south has numerous centers producing culture. Urban North Carolina, Houston, Austin, Nashville etc..

    Note, I separate Texas from the south in my own head. As far as international influence goes Dallas and Houston both surpass Atlanta.

  10. New Orleans, but then again, it’s such unique place that it’s almost a foreign city-state. Not counting NOLA, it’s definitely ATL.

  15. The people who say Atlanta and New Orleans aren’t wrong. Honestly, Atlanta doesn’t feel culturally Southern to me anymore. New Orleans does, so do Charleston and Savannah to an extent. Due to migration from the North not many Southern cities still feel like the South, although some do.

    Parts of Virginia still feel Southern, but northern Virginia doesn’t, and neither does Richmond.

  17. So speaking from the west coast, when I think the south I think Atlanta. So I gotta go with Atlanta. Nashville and New Orleans seem like more regional cultural capitals.

  19. It is nearly unequivocally Atlanta, Georgia imo.

    New Orleans would be a distant, but clear on its own, second place.

  23. The only part of Alabama that’s aligned with Nashville is the far northern part of the state with Nashville and Muscle Shoals. The rest of the state is more similar to and connected with Atlanta. Birmingham and Atlanta were basically mirror images of each other until the 1960s. The Mobile area is aligned with New Orleans.

    Atlanta is the definite cultural capital of the South. New Orleans gets honorable mention as the historic cultural capital of the South.

  24. Atlanta.

    It’s easily the most prevalent across industries and featured in pop culture.

  25. Feel like I’m taking crazy pills with all the Atlanta and New Orleans comments. Atlanta is a huge and extremely influential city, but I really don’t think of it as having Southern culture. Just being in the South geographically isn’t enough, which is why no one is suggesting big cities in Florida either (maybe with the exception of Jacksonville). As for New Orleans, it’s occurring to me that I really equate the “South” to the Southeast. Louisiana isn’t any more “Southern” to me than Texas is.

    My vote is Charleston, SC 100%. Not the biggest city, but absolutely oozes Southern culture.

  27. The south has multiple regional subcultures that are not as homogeneous as you would expect. Somebody wrote a book on it that I thought made a lot of sense, but I forget what it’s called.

    I’d say Nashville is the “capital” of the northern one, with Atlanta and New Orleans sort of being twin flames in the deep south. I grew up in TN and we never heard a thing about ATL or NO. Literally never went there or thought about them meaningfully at all except for avoiding having to drive through ATL at all costs. Right or wrong, in my experience the Upper south sort of considers the deep south an often-swampy craphole with some quaint vacation towns as you approach the east coast.

  28. There isn’t one. The South is the most populated region of the major regions (others being northeast, midwest and west) of the United States by a fair bit (close to a third of the population). The northeast and Midwest happen to have their largest cities in the middle of their regions and the cities tend to roughly cluster near it and dwindle in pop going away (more noticeable with northeast). The West on the other hand, is basically empty in large swaths, and even then it’s a question between LA and Bay. The center of the South is basically Alabama (less so if you cut out TX and FL), which doesn’t have anything remotely close to a Chicago or New York (and it would need to be that large, considering the South is that more populated and physically larger).

    To illustrate, Washington, Miami and Austin are all roughly equidistant from Birmingham. Chicago is closer. There can’t be a single capital for the South.

  29. Birmingham, Atlanta, New Orleans, Charleston, Memphis, Nashville. That’s what I’m going with. All 6 contribute to the southern culture in unique ways it’s hard to pick just one.

  31. Honestly it depends on whether you look at the south as a large homogenous region or not. If its a homogenous region to you, the capital is unquestionably Atlanta.

    To me, though, I grew up in North Carolina and I see a few distinctions in the south. To me, east of the [Fall Line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_line) is fairly different culturally from where I lived in [the piedmont](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piedmont_(United_States)). Savannah and Charleston can fight over being the capital of east of the fall line. The piedmont includes most of the larger cities in the south (Richmond, RDU, the Triad, Charlotte, Atlanta, Columbia, etc. ). Atlanta is the capital of this region.

    I also lived in the mountains. The southern Appalachian region is fairly different from the rest of the south. In fact, the region was the south’s enemy during the Civil War. Even today, the region is a bit more progressive than the rest of the south (think Asheville vs. IDK, Winston-Salem). Even this area feels split. Asheville, Gatlinburg, and Chattanooga are fairly distinct from one another.

    West of the Appalachians covers a large area and I’d call Memphis the capital of that region.

    Then there’s the Gulf Coast, where New Orleans is definitely the capital.

  35. Atlanta.

    The only possible (but improbable) contenders are Charlestown, SC and NOLA. Neither beat Atlanta though.

  36. Atlanta. New Orleans on it’s own is quite different from the rest of the south. You could make an argument for the Texas triangle for the modern south, but Atlanta is definitely the cultural heart of the south

  37. As a Midwesterner, I’ve always considered the South’s(Texas not included) hub to be Atlanta.

  42. Interestingly everyone, including myself is in agreement with Atlanta being the cultural capital but I wonder why that is? It’s not the biggest like charlotte or Jacksonville and it’s not the home of music (Nashville), entertainment(New Orleans), or food. So how did Atlanta become so ubiquitous with being the hub of the south?

  43. ITT: “Atlanta”

    This is an interesting concept though, would it be fair to say:

    NE cultural hub: NYC

    Midwest: Chicago

    Mountain West: Denver

    Southwest: LA

    Texas: Houston vs Austin

  45. Atlanta.
    Texas and Florida are kinda their own thing
    Cities like New Orleans, Charleston, & Savannah have a classic southern vibe but are fairly irrelevant in modern day.

  46. Definitely Atlanta as others are saying, I was gonna say Miami but that’s more of a Latin American cultural capital from what I’ve heard

  47. I live near Huntsville in Bama. Been to ATL many times, Nashville twice. It’s Atlanta, that city has absolutely everything!

  49. Its Atlanta. No other answer.

    It’s the mecca of Black America culture.

    You can’t have a cultural capital of the American south without the descendants of the slaves basically running the place and looking damned good while doing it.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like