Kentucky Lady: 2008

There is great debate on whether Kentucky is Southern or not. Well, back in september there was a panel discussion over the issue and here is one of their observations and conclusions:

A week ago, I asked readers whether they thought Kentucky was a Southern state. I was gathering material for a panel discussion on that topic last Saturday at the Lexington Public Library with three historians — James Klotter and Lisa Lykins from Georgetown College and Bill Ellis, who is retired from Eastern Kentucky University. The many comments and emails I received were very helpful.
Several readers have emailed me since then wondering how the panel discussion turned out. Generally, we all agreed that Kentucky is a Southern state, with some influences from the Midwest and elsewhere. Below are my prepared remarks for the discussion:
Walter Lippman once described journalism as the "last refuge of the vaguely talented." Journalists are rarely experts at anything.So let me begin with the disclaimer that I have no academic credentials to determine whether or not Kentucky is or is not a Southern state. I'm not a historian, a geographer, a demographer, an anthropologist or a sociologist. So it's a probably a good thing that Jim Klotter asked me go first.However, journalists tend to become keen observers of people and their culture. I'm a native Kentuckian and have been a journalist here for many years. I spent another two decades as a journalist in Tennessee and Georgia, and during that time traveled there and in many other Southern states covering news, interviewing people and writing stories.Journalists also are good at asking other people what they think - both experts, and average folks.A true expert in this matter is my friend John Egerton, the Kentucky-born author who has lived for many years in Nashville, Tennessee. John's many fine books include "The Americanization of Dixie: The Southernization of America" and "Southern Food." In 2000, John delivered a speech on this very topic at Eastern Kentucky University, and he was kind enough to send me a copy of it this week.I also threw this question up on my blog this week. It proved to be quite a talker. When I checked earlier today, it has been read more than 1,200 times, and more than 40 people had left comments or sent me emails. Many of those responses were long, detailed and passionate.So, based on this highly unscientific research, let's consider the evidence:In the early days of pioneer settlement, Kentucky was considered the West. In the early 1800s, a leading newspaper in Lexington was called the Western Monitor. In the first half of the 19th Century, much of Kentucky's economy resembled that of other Southern states. It had lucrative agricultural industries whose success depended on the evil institution of human slavery. In fact, hundreds of slaves were bought and sold on Cheapside, a couple of blocks from where we're sitting.During the Civil War, Kentucky was a bitterly divided border state – claimed by both sides, occupied by both sides and filled with people loyal to both sides. Central Kentucky in particular had many Southern sympathizers. In the election of 1860, Kentuckian Abraham Lincoln got fewer votes in Lexington than he had inlaws living here. Some of the top Confederates were from Kentucky, including Jefferson Davis and John C. Breckinridge, who also lived a few blocks from here.Kentucky never officially seceded from the union, although a Confederate government was organized. Kentucky escaped Reconstruction. Yet, after the Civil War was over, many wealthy Kentuckians embraced the South's lost cause with gusto. It probably had something to do with racism – and a lot more to do with their desire to market expensive horses and bourbon whiskey to outsiders with money. When it comes to Southern imagery, the Kentucky Colonel in a white linen suit, sipping mint juleps on the porch of his white-columned mansion, is hard to top.The heart of this question, though, isn't so much about Kentucky's history as its culture. And this is where the argument gets heated. Is Kentucky Southern or Midwestern?Officially, the Mason-Dixon line went along the Ohio River, putting Kentucky in the South. But are there other lines of demarcation we should consider? Does Kentucky have a cultural equivalent of Georgia's gnat line? If you haven't heard of the gnat line, it runs east-to-west somewhere vaguely south of Macon. Below the gnat line, the tiny insects will pester you all summer. Above the gnat line, though, you almost never see gnats.A few of the people who commented on my blog this week had their own imaginary lines in mind. Or they wanted to look at Kentucky as a burgoo of influences. One of my favorite comments came from David Greer of the Kentucky Press Association, who wrote, "We have elements of Southern culture, Midwestern manufacturing and weather from all over creation."Several readers argued that parts of Louisville and Northern Kentucky were more Midwestern than Southern, perhaps owing to Ohio River commerce or the wave of European immigration to those cities in the late 1800s.But others fought back. Churchill Downs, Midwestern? Please. And what are the words on that big water tower along I-75 in Northern Kentucky? Florence Y'all. It does not say Florence You Guys.The overwhelming concensus of my blog's readers was that Kentucky is a Southern state and should be proud of it. Readers cited several pieces of evidence:Kentucky is latitudinally equivalent to Virginia, although we don't still fight the Civil War on a daily basis, as some Virgnians do.The University of Kentucky's sports teams play in the Southeastern Conference.Nothing is more Southern than fried chicken. And no fried chicken is more authentic than Kentucky Fried Chicken. If you don't believe that, just ask anyone in China.Readers' opinions are backed up in a more scientific poll, which was conducted in 1999 by University of North Carolina sociologist John Shelton Reed. In that poll, 79 percent of Kentuckians thought the community in which they lived was in the South, and 68 percent of Kentuckians considered themselves Southerners.To me, most of Kentucky seems decidedly Southern, especially the Jackson Purchase. In fact, far western Kentucky seems more like west Tennessee than it does the rest of Kentucky. And west Tennessee seems more like northern Mississippi than it does the rest of Tennessee. My mother is from the Jackson Purchase, and anyone who hears her voice will realize quickly that she is from the South.John Egerton agrees that Kentucky is certainly a Southern state. Its music is Southern. Its religion is Southern. And, most of all, its food is Southern. And when it comes to Southern food, John is an expert.In his speech at EKU, John suggested another sort of gnat line for determining this question. He quoted Robert "Old Bob" Taylor, the 19th Century Tennessee politician, as saying that the line between North and South was all about the temperature of fresh bread. Do people eat cold bread, or hot bread? Northerners eat bread cold. Southerners like fresh bread hot.Kentucky, as we all know, is a land of hot biscuits, cornbread and spoon bread. And at any good Kentucky table, you likely will eat that hot bread with country ham, the best of which is made in Kentucky. To most people from elsewhere - and certainly to Yankees — country ham is too salty for human consumption. To most Southerners, it is simply divine.Some of the South's best hickory-smoked barbecue can be found in Western Kentucky. My favorite barbecue is made in the Graves County community of Fancy Farm on the first Saturday of each August. Of course, much of the meat for that barbecue is mutton freshly imported from the Midwest, but let's not go there.Sweet tea may not be the only choice in Kentucky, as it is in much of the Deep South, but it is usually an option. And Kentuckians are a people who believe that any vegetable worth cooking is worth over-cooking.Of course, the quintessential drink of the Old South would be nothing more than mint-flavored sugar water were it not for bourbon whiskey, virtually all of which is made in Kentucky. (But I will point out that any sensible Kentuckian considers a mint julep a terrible waste of good bourbon.)So, I conclude emphatically that Kentucky is a Southern state. But it is important to remember that the South is no more homogenous than the people who live here. There is the Deep South, the Appalachian highlands, the low country of South Carolina, the Virginia Piedmont, the bayous of south Louisiana, the scrub forests of north Louisiana and South Florida, which hardly even seems American. They are all Southern. And they are all very different, as are the people who live there.Yes, clues to Southernness can be found in history and diet. There is further evidence in our music and our religion, and how we relate to family. Regional identity is about the way we talk, and about Southern manners and hospitality.But more than anything, it has to do with how we see ourselves.Kentucky is Southern because most people here think they are Southern. Sure, some Northern Kentuckians will identify more with Cincinnati. And some people in Louisville embrace the term Kentuckiana. I have always recoiled at the very sound of Kentuckiana, believing as I do, that God put the Ohio River there for a good reason.

Exactly what I think too :)