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Southern Legitimacy Statement: Jon Sokol is a writer and a professional forester. He lives in Hartwell, Georgia with his wife, Karen, and their cat, Layla. Originally from South Carolina, Jon is a graduate of both Clemson University (BS-Forestry) and Georgia Southern (MBA) and is currently enrolled in the Etowah Valley…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in the South, but I’ve been around. I carry it with me everywhere. An Evening with Friends Jo-Jo shook loose tobacco onto the paper, rolled it and ran his tongue along the edge. He stowed the near-empty pouch and the book of…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Missouri and now live (very, very) close to Atlanta. With the exception of college, I have spent my entire life in the South. She Would Always Be My Girl From birth, she was love at first sightHer eyes set my heart…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am legitimately from the South, even though people from further South may debate the legitimacy of the Tidewater area and accent. My father, like me, was raised in Virginia, and this story is a creative retelling of one of the many stories my even more Southern…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: No need for the Confederate flag, which has spread far beyond the South as a symbol of hatred and racism. Waffle House serves as the true boundary marker for the region. Cheesy eggs, grits, raisin toast, and bottomless mugs of coffee work for me. Always have, always…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Sunday mornings at our house it’s grits, red eye gravy, country ham, eggs over easy and buttermilk biscuits. (Please don’t tell my doctor.) I’ve walked 3 miles to a one room schoolhouse taught by an 18-year old girl with one year of business school and lots of…

As for a Southern Legitimacy statement, here goes:I was born and raised outside of Knoxville, Tennessee.  One great-great-great grandfather was an abolitionist state representative in the Radical Republican legislature in Tennessee during Reconstruction.  Another great-great-great grandfather was a member of the 1st Tennessee Cavalry, CSA, was wounded, captured, and interned…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: After studying at Southern Illinois University, I left to follow all roads South and South East from Alabama to Texas, and finally, Tucson. I hang with people who believe in biscuits and gravy the way others believe in the purity of worship. Crank up the Allman Brothers,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement On my dad’s side of the family, we arrived in North America with Winthrop’s fleet in 1630. They were a whole decade behind mom’s kinfolk, who came on the Mayflower in 1620. I can say with confidence my family fought in every war since (and on both…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m an Appalachian woman, born and bred. I grew up in West Virginia (in a middle class, blue-collar, working-class family). My parents were not college educated but knew they wanted their children to be and stressed achievement and work-ethic to all of their children, always. I write…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in rural North Carolina. Though I drink my tea with a bit less sugar these days, the soles of my feet are still tough from going barefoot. I never sit in grass or weeds for fear of chiggers. I look strangers in the eyes…

Southern Legitimacy Statement : I was born and raised in the great state of North Carolina, where I grew up in what was once a farming community. I was raised by those who grew up working in the tobacco fields of Johnston County. A place where some of the best…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: There’s more to the South than culture, food, idiom, hunting, fishing and football. I have been a citizen of the South for a long time. I have seen changes in the demographics, the climate, the culture seen through how we respond to and perceive each other –…

SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT: I grew up crossing the Mississippi River each weekend to go four-wheeling, fishing, and running around barefoot. From Quincy, IL to Maywood, Missouri (20 short back-road minutes from Hannibal, MO, home of Mark Twain), my dad and I would return to his country roots. I’d watch dad…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up miles from Kentucky, spent summers in Tennessee, and married a guy from Tennessee. I consider the South my second home. Is that legitimate enough? Oh, my daughter will be attending Ole Miss in the fall. Costumes for a Different Woman The dresses in my…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: There used to be preachers along the North Carolina/Virginia border who ran whiskey Saturday nights and preached fire and brimstone Sunday mornings. I know. I listened to them through the windows of The Holy Way Baptist Church as I smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes and sipped some of…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I had two mules by the time I was 18 — old Jake and Sara Jane. I learn to plow the rich black dirt fields of East Texas at 14. That’s when I learned “A farting mule can’t pull and a pulling mule can’t fart”. My dad…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I ate grits for the first time when I was eighteen and a starving university student in Tallahassee, Florida. Grits filled something deep inside me as did the intoxicating perfume of a rainstorm during a summer afternoon and the sight of Spanish Moss dripping from the Live…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in the North, live in the North, but spent 4 years studying literature in Atlanta, which I’m guessing you don’t consider to be the South. This story is, however, about people who came to America from Sicily, which is its own South, to live…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Hong Kong (it’s in the southern part of China). I lived in Burlington, KY for a few years. While I was coaching high school football across the river in Ohio, the coaches would say, “You can’t be from Kentucky; you’re wearing shoes.” In…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: In keeping with the theme of this poem, various motorcycles marked my years in the South. In high school in Winston-Salem, I rode a Honda CT90, low on speed and power, but I got back and forth to school for 50 cents a week. At Wake Forest,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: We moved to North Carolina when I was ten. It was 1979, and I watched The Dukes of Hazard religiously. I spent summer days in the woods along the Haw River. My buddy and I would walk the creek looking for crayfish, keeping a careful eye out…

And here is my Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Jackson, TN, and grew up in Johnson City, TN, living there from the time I was two until I was twenty-four. I’ve lived in Mississippi and Georgia, but most of my adult life has been in or around Chattanooga,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a Gulf-Coast Southerner, through and through. I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. For the first half of my life, I lived in uptown until Hurricane Katrina. After swimming out of my home and all of that jazz, I moved around the country until I…