Southern Legitimacy Statement: This is a fake news story of how Nags Head, North Carolina lost its apostrophe. How Nags Head Lost its Apostrophe “Take it and be damned!” . . . Thomas J. Harkaway Perhaps the first and most important thing to say about Nags Head is that virtually…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I read that you folks originated in Pamlico. I used to work for the Sun Journal in New Bern. That was back in the days when daily newspapers were healthy. This story is one of a 100 that focuses on the city of Greensburg and Dinwoodie County,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My earliest memories were of living in a small coal-mining “company house” near Shinnston West Virginia, and of using the two-holer out back. The aunt who raised me eventually moved the family to a small enclave of West Virginia ex-pats in southeastern Ohio, across the river from…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My Grampa Navy was from Copper Hill, Tennessee, a place that still sounds like “Copper Heel, Tin ah see” when I type the words even though it’s been decades since he spoke about the acid and the Burra Burra mine. When I was about 9, living near…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: As to Southern Legitimacy, in my day job as an archaeologist, I have dug holes and recovered history from throughout the Southeast. I have investigated the defining site types of the region, including whiskey stills, kilns where alkaline-glazed pottery was made, a 6-foot thick midden of oyster…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in New York with dyed-in-the wool Southern parents. They arrived in the city during The Depression determined “to make it,” as my father said, and they did. But they brought along with them the Southern rulebook of “shoulds” and expectations, which I called The…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: All you had to say was, “we don’t recommend you submit,” so I am submitting. Such is my legitimacy … Two Poems COOL JOHN FERGUSON He plays the requisite R&B, ballad, samba, smooth jazz, the pop tune all blued up then slowly ascends from the padded office…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am from the deep south of the Deep South, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I lived in the Glory Land for 30 years until I decided to spread my Southerness abroad, and now I live in Bangkok, Thailand, promoting Southern speech (especially “y’all”) to coworkers and students alike. The…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: “Southern since ’63 with no plans to go anywhere else!” Mr. Aldon When my father died, Aldon Keane attended his wake in soiled jeans and a stained tee-shirt, his face a mask of tears. He hurtled into the sanctuary as though trying to forestall an emergency, to…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Rome, GA, and raised in Trion, Pennville, and Summerville, GA. After many years as a road musician and earning three degrees–A.S., B.A., M.A., I taught English in three colleges, two of them in Georgia, after returning to my roots. I now live and…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Having recently purchased an old farmhouse in rural Georgia allows for all kinds of inspiration. Some wonderful and some horrific. This story is one such instance. Good Fences Phone calls that come early in the morning are never good news. “Your daughter is in jail.” “Your bees…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in the South and left it vowing never to return. Never say never. I came back. Sure I don’t like grits or football, but there’s something about the South that gets into your blood. I used to say I was from the South…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am as Southern as grits, biscuits, and gravy, having the double blessing of being brought into this world in the great state of Georgia (Atlanta to be precise) and having my raising in the Volunteer State of Tennessee. I have been educated here and have worked…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a Mississippian, born in the Northern Hills and currently living in the flatlands of the Delta. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a rural community where I learned the value of family, faith, and food, even if I didn’t know to appreciate these…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: We moved from West Virginia to South Carolina in 1952. The other kids were surprised I wore shoes and I was equally surprised that they did not. My step-father moved us to Aiken when he took a job at the Savannah River Plant, which was nicknamed “the…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a Southerner born and raised on a tobacco farm in Eastern North Carolina. The farm sits on a hill with a small creek running around its base. The slopes are wooded, so only about half of the acreage is cleared, but tobacco was a labor-intensive…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas home of the University of Arkansas Razorbacks and what was once one of the prettiest little Southern squares you might ever see. I was gone a long time and missed the square when it fell on hard times and nearly got…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Along with Rosey Grier I was born in Tyler deep in the piney woods. Soon after that blessed event my mother rode the train to L.A. with her baby, but I returned to Texas every summer through adolescence. Eventually I traded LaLaLand for the Deep South where…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Only in the South can you walk into the woods and be surrounded by something so familiar yet so different from everything you’ve ever known. It is like seeing a life-long friend and forgetting their name: there’s the tenderness that you remember in the back of your…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: The South is a complicated thing for me. It’s where I was born — North Carolina, to be exact. It’s where I couldn’t wait to leave. It’s where I’ve always been. This region has beautiful places and people. But it also continues to be haunted by demons…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am as Southern as grits, biscuits, and gravy, having the double blessing of being brought into this world in the great state of Georgia (Atlanta to be precise) and having my raising in the Volunteer State of Tennessee. I have been educated here and have worked…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Paula Kaufman hails from the only state entirely in the Appalachian Mountains. She likes homemade jam, local honey, black licorice laces, her grandma’s meringues and other sweetness. 21st Century Asking the Stars Advice Pea tendrils don’t know where to land, but always rise up. And the morning…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Richard grew up in the north, moved to Tennessee in 1992.  Later moved to the Charleston suburb of Summerville, SC where he enjoys sweet tea and grits (rhymes with “as good as it gets”).   Grave Speak “Gee Paw, mommy thinks you are getting too old to…

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. My Insurance Policy From 1997 to 2002, I taught members of industrial fire brigades from Oklahoma to Maine…