Deep South

The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion of the Southern United States. The term is used to describe the states which were most economically dependent on the plantation system and African chattel slavery, generally Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. East Texas, North Florida, the Arkansas Delta, South Arkansas, West Tennessee, and the southern part of North Carolina are sometimes included as well.

Following the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the region experienced significant economic hardship and became a focal point of racial tension during the Reconstruction era, when emancipated enslaved people and Free Blacks asserted their rights, and, protected by the Federal government and Union Army, played significant roles in state governments. This incited the creation and growth of the Ku Klux Klan and similar white paramilitary groups. After Reconstruction and the Compromise of 1877, the Federal government largely withdrew from the area, and the civil rights of African Americans were suppressed by "Jim Crow" laws for almost a century. The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s helped usher in a new era, sometimes referred to as the New South.