New South

Reformers used it to call for a modernization of society and attitudes, to integrate more fully with the United States as a whole, reject the economy and traditions of the Old South, and the slavery-based plantation system of the prewar period.

Historian Paul Gaston coined the specific term "New South Creed" to describe the promises of visionaries like Grady, who said industrialization would bring prosperity to the region.

The declining aristocracy are ineffectual and money hungry, and in the last analysis, they subordinated the values of their political and social heritage in order to maintain control over the black population.

The poor whites suffered from strange malignancies of racism and conspiracy-mindedness, and the rising middle class was timid and self-interested even in its reform movement.

Their hopes were to make a fresh "new" start, forming partnerships with Northern capitalists in order to modernize and speed up economic development of the South.

From Henry Grady to Black leader Booker T. Washington, New South advocates wanted southern economic regeneration, sectional reconciliation, racial harmony, and believed in the gospel of work.

In the southern mountains, the Tennessee Valley Authority built dams, which generated employment and electricity that affected numerous residents and manufacturers alike.

In the post-World War II era, American textiles makers and other light industries moved en masse to the South to capitalize on low wages, social conservatism, and anti-union sentiments.

The beginnings of the Civil Rights era in the 1950s and 1960s, led to a revival of the term to describe a South that would no longer be held back by Jim Crow Laws and other aspects of compulsory legal segregation.

At the same time, in 1964, several white Southern politicians and state voters supported Republican Barry Goldwater for President over Democratic incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson.

This term was most commonly associated with the wave of Southern governors elected in the late 1960s and 1970s, including Terry Sanford in North Carolina, Carl Sanders and Jimmy Carter in Georgia, and Albert Brewer in Alabama.

Automobile manufacturers BMW, Toyota, Mercedes, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Nissan, and Volkswagen have opened plants in states such as Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi, and West Virginia.

[12] Atlanta is also home to many global corporations, including The Coca-Cola Company, UPS, CNN,[13] Norfolk Southern, NCR, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche.