by Amanda Vernor
I’m a legitimate sixth-generation southern gal with roots in Alabama, North Carolina, Mississippi and Texas, evidenced by my less-frequent but sudden cravings for slow-cooked grits and fried green tomatoes. Community Coffee was the motor oil of my morning for many years. And I don’t believe I’m the only one whose great-great Aunt hoarded chests of Confederate money, convinced the South would Rise Again.

Julie Walczesky
Southern Legitimacy Statement
I certify that I am a Southern belle in barefeet. I was born in the small town of Tryon, NC. Like most southern families, we lived next door to my granny,and I could make sweet tea and tater salad by the time I was three. I like my grits yellow and my chicken fried, my dogs are mutts and the best times I ever had were around a campfire with friendsor just hiking in the woods appreciating the beauty of this earth. City air will kill you, come breathe my pine.

Terry Lowenstein
Southern Legitimacy Statement
I am Southern by birth, I was born in Virginia, but my accent does little to validate this. Blame this on the fact that I spent a great deal of my childhood in New England. It was during my teens and in the years that followed that I was “baptized by surf and sand”in the land of perpetual summer- Florida. It was there that I learned about religion, hurricanes, and the seductiveness of the beach. It was in Florida that I feel in love, married, and gave birth. Now looking back it is hard to believe that I spent nearly three decades there. I now
reside in North Carolina (soon, I will have spent almost a decade here). But it is more than the mere passage of time spent in the south that defines me as a Southerner, it is the gift of experience that has come from living in the land of cotton, sweet tea, and (to borrow the
words of another) “steel magnolias.”

Charles Christie
Southern Legitimacy Statement
If I were on death row my last meal would include barbeque, fried okra, and green beans cooked down until they were nearly black. The barbeque would certainly be pork because as every southerner knows, “if it ain’t pig it ain’t barbeque.” Of course I have no reason to be on death row but I do have a cousin doing a life sentence.

As a boy I thought my aunt Sally may be headed to prison since everyone said that no one would blame her if she knocked uncle Johnny in the head and threw him in a ditch. However, the head knocking may not have killed uncle Johnny since he already had a steel plate in his head. It was never clear why uncle Johnny had a plate in his head. He may have gotten it in the war, but that sounds too noble since Johnny was hardly worth killing. Johnny was just ’sorry’ and ’sorry’ was a term women of my family used to describe shiftless or drunken men and Johnny was both shiftless and drunken.

Probably because of those southern women I have made it my business to never be sorry, meaning a drunk or unwilling to work. However, like many southerners I do have a streak of sorry running down the back of my pride for this delightfully tasty place.

Patrick Walsh
Southern Legitimacy Statement
WHY SOUTHERN…..My mule……though it may have been a non-breeding donkey..
died when I was 12…….we didn’t bury him for weeks…..I was heartbroken until my buddy Mike Flynn loaned me a bootleg tape of L Skynrd[that cured me].

I’m from Cork in the south of Ireland…..our hurling team[yes hurling] who are the 2004 All -Ireland Champions are known as” the rebels”.

The River Lee [ not called after Robert.E ] runs through our city.

One of the Union generals was born near here in a place called Farren.

My uncle^s daughter who married Flaherty is rumoured to be lost somewhere in the Southern[US]….if anyone knows her[about 70 yrs] or her kin…write me…..

And lastly I still love my long dead grandma……all right….