Southern Legitimacy Statement
I do not have a pickup truck or a hound dog, and the only thing I hunt regularly is my glasses. But I do love me some homemade cornbread, and still miss my Grandma’s fried chicken. That woman could fry a boot and make it taste like heaven! I also think The Andy Griffith Show is the best series that’s ever been on television…

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Like some broke-nose Faulkner creation, I’ve circled back finally to the place from which I first came in the green mountains of North Carolina, back into the little house my grandparents built in 1932, back to my father’s roots. Not long ago, sitting on the front porch, I had this unexpected vision of what he must have looked like walking up the dusty road to home after four years of war, a man in a uniform but still a skinny mountain boy glad to have escaped the Pacific in one piece. There was pure joy on his face. And me still just a gleam in his eye. Sometimes in the slick red clay of the hand-dug cellar, I look for his fingerprints, certain they’re there, just as surely as they imprint my ragged soul.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I drove down in a gray 1963 Volkswagen with New Jersey license plates, just enough to be all-Yankee identified. Here I was, in North Carolina, summer of 1969, with really long black hair, bleached out bell-bottoms, orange and green beads around my neck that I referred to as “peas and carrots”, hippie tendencies, and wondered why I feared for my life. I felt myself in a sort of incomprehensible cultural deficiency and didn’t sleep too well for about a week, and when I did I had one eye open. I found myself hanging out with another Yankee hippie named Stoney, for obvious reasons, and a black guy named Rufus, who later changed his name to Nunche’ when he joined the Black Panthers, and never saw him again. Stoney had been living in the South for awhile and told me “just learn to eat grits and never bend over in a crowd”. Nunche’ recognized my fears and said “You really don’t have to worry until they set fire to the cross, then run like hell!” To this day I love grits, stand straight up and try to avoid all fires in front yards.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I have passed a lot of time living in New Orleans and traveling from there to Des Plaines, Illinois and back to NOLA. I take comfort in living by a river. I know what “lagniappe” means, and I plan on being buried above ground.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I make chocolate pecan pie with bourbon and dark Karo syrup in my home in Wilmington, NC.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I hail from the Ozarks of southern Missouri. My granddaddy used to say to me, “If I had a nickel, I couldn’t get out of Howell County.” And dammit. Now it’s happened to me. I’ve traveled the great wide world, but for some reason I’m hooked on these southern Missourah hills and people and summers of heat and death and ticks and blackberries. Once a year, I wear hunter orange, and though I teach school, I like to bust out my good share of “ain’ts.”

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Hey Ya’ll. My name is Jenny Billings Beaver (used to be Jenny Elizabeth Billings – SO OLD FASHIONED) and I have lived in North Carolina my entire life. I grew up on a dairy farm – in fact, I lived so far in the country that we didn’t get cable, pizza deliveries or any-kind-of-traffic until 2002. I didn’t have a bike, I rode around our 30 acres on a golf cart – that was long after we moved out of our marigold yellow mobile home with white shutters and grassy green carpet that sat under a weeping willow (it died when Hurricane Hugo came through in 1989). I drank only sweet tea the first 18 years of my life, still call my grandfather “Poppa”, love me some grits and sausage (with a lil’ mustard, of course!) and for god sake – married a man with the last name “Beaver” this Halloween.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I’ve come to learn that Cuban-Americans, like me, and Southerners share distinct similarities, most importantly barbecue, storing lard, and wearing jackets in 65-degree weather. I had to move six hours north of Miami to learn to become a Southerner. I have come to believe Thanksgiving turkey should be served with hot sauce. I garden year-round. I swear I spotted an ivory-billed woodpecker in my backyard. But I finally felt Southern when my daughter started calling me Momma unprompted.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I was legitimately born in Birmingham, Alabama.
I crossed the Mason and Dixon Line at age 13.
Cousin Louise took care of me and my cousin
daily, while our mothers worked.
I was the trustworthy cousin sent to pay bills
with the money penned safely to my underwear which
was not to be removed until I reached the teller.
And I was not to forget to return home with the
bill marked paid.
My father, called Boy, and my uncles Ad, and Bud
were weekend alcholics.
I like all the foods in the pyramid except possum.
I am called crazy by the men in the family.
So help me God.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I spent many years living in Florida. Now, some people don’t think Florida is really part of the South because that’s where all the Yanks retire, and there’s some truth to this. But I also took Basic Training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and by anybody’s measure South Carolina is in the South. But my main claim to being a Southerner is the fact I have sold pickled pig’s feet. No true Northerner would ever do such a thing, for the very fact that pigs have feet creeps him out and the very fact people eat them creeps him out more. And while I must admit the Yank in me was a little creeped out, I got over it. It helped I needed the job.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Well, now…what a question. I ain’t ever been asked to explain exactly what makes me Southern. It just is. To tell you honest, I’m a whole lot more used to folks assuming my being Southern as illegitimate. Bless their hearts.

But since you’re pressing…

I speak with a slow, soft drawl. Slow – because I like a chance to think on what’s getting ready to come out of my mouth before I cast it onto somebody else. And the drawl part – because… well, that’s just the way it comes out – with its edges all worn down. I know that saying “ma’am” and “sir” confers a level of respect to the person I’m addressing. But I was taught that shutting up is oftentimes smarter than telling every little thing it is I think I know.

I know what red mud feels like squishing up between my toes in a garden. As a child I had to cut my own hickory switch …and knew what one felt like on the back of my legs in exchange for my impertinence. I’ve felt the weight of a deep August southern night settle around my shoulders like a blanket. I grew up knowing that crickets are closer to songbirds than pests – and that it’s bad luck to kill one. I still sleep under a handmade quilt. I know how to play a fiddle and have, on occasion, watched the serious purpose an old man can bring to cutting a fine rug to its tune. Lord, but old men can take their dancing something serious.

I don’t reckon explaining all this proves, much less improves, much. But there it is.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I was conceived on a houseboat on the Ashley River in Charleston, South Carolina and was born in Monroe, North Carolina first year of the Baby Boomers. I got my undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. My kin, Irish immigrants to North and South Carolina, fought for the Confederacy. I drive miles out of my way to eat Lexington Barbeque, and belong to a band of pirates and sailors, Brothers of the Coast, located in Savannah, Georgia. I live in the town of Black Mountain in western North Carolina.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

My Latino roots offer a unique perspective to my Southern legitimacy. I was raised so far in the South it’s not even the South to many, that’s how far south I lived, Miami to be exact. Eventually I moved up with you “northerner’s” to Raleigh, North Carolina, and was introduced to a pig pickin’ almost immediately. My friendly neighbors weren’t impressed about how we Colombians do the exact same thing, but they were awful polite! So here I am, a stranger in a strange land, 5 years now. I say hey, not good morning, and my wife is hot on the trail of the best hushpuppy recipe she can find. Legitimacy established!

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

When the slaves were freed in my hometown, Fayetteville, Arkansas, most of those who stayed moved near one another in a rugged hollow just below downtown referred to as either the “Holler,” “Spout Spring,” or “Tin Cup” (the latter term used by more “liberal” whites, although the black folks thought it demeaning apparently because the Tin Cup reference seemed to indicate a cheapness or paucity of value to them). Through reconstruction and into the mid-20th century, the hollow remained the main black area of town – and, in fact, nearly remains so today. But sometime around the end of WWII, at least two men made enough money to move out of the hollow and into still poor, but otherwise all white, south Fayetteville. One man was Ralph “Buddy” Hayes, who was so popular as a bandleader that he was able to buy a home for he and his family out of the hollow. The other man was Otis Parker, a locally renowned horseman. Both Buddy Hayes and Mr. Parker remained highly regarded men in the community until their deaths in the latter part of the century.