- Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Finis Davis was an American politician who served as President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history from 1861 to 1865 during the American Civil War. Davis believed that corruption had destroyed the old Union and that the Confederacy had to be pure to survive. During his presidency, Davis was never able to find a strategy that would defeat the larger, more industrially developed Union. - Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 - July 9, 1850) was an American military leader and the twelfth President of the United States. Known as "Old Rough and Ready," Taylor had a 40-year military career in the U.S. Army, serving in the War of 1812, Black Hawk War, and Second Seminole War after achieving fame while leading U.S. troops to victory at several critical battles of the Mexican-American War. A Southern slaveholder who opposed the spread of slavery to the territories, … - Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe was a white American abolitionist and novelist, whose "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852) attacked the cruelty of slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential, even in Britain. It made the political issues of the 1850s regarding slavery tangible to millions, energizing anti-slavery forces in the North. It angered and embittered the South. - Nat Turner
Nat, remembered today as Nat Turner was an American slave whose failed slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, was the most remarkable instance of black resistance to enslavement in the antebellum southern United States. His methodical slaughter of white civilians during the uprising makes his legacy controversial, but he is still considered by many to be a heroic figure of black resistance to oppression. - Eudora Welty
Eudora Welty (b. April 13 1909, Jackson, Mississippi - d. July 23 2001, Jackson, Mississippi) was an award-winning author and photographer who wrote about the American South. Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, … - Jordin Sparks
Jordin Brianna Sparks (born on December 22, 1989 in Phoenix, Arizona) is an American singer. On May 23, 2007, she was declared the winner of the sixth season of the reality television show "American Idol". At 17, this makes her the youngest winner in "American Idol" history. In addition, she is the only winner who is from the Southwestern United States, rather than the Southern United States - Diplo
Diplo, Diplodocus, Wes Gully, and Wes Diplo are all pseudonyms of Wesley Pentz, a Philadelphia-based producer and DJ. Together with DJ Low Budget, he runs Hollertronix, a club and music collective. In addition to his solo career, he has worked with British-based singer and artist M.I.A.. The two were also romantically involved. - Grady McWhiney
Grady McWhiney (July 15 1928 - April 18 2006) was a historian of the American south and the Civil War. McWhiney was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, and served in the Marine Corps in 1945. He married in 1947. He attended Centenary College on the G.I. Bill and earned an M.A. in history from Louisiana State University, working with Francis Butler Simkins. He received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University in New York, working with David Donald. - Eric Robert Rudolph
Eric Robert Rudolph (born September 19, 1966), also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, is an American anti-abortion and anti-gay extremist and domestic terrorist who committed a series of bombings across the southern United States, which killed three people and injured at least 150 others. He declared that his bombings were part of a guerrilla campaign against abortion, … - Blowfly
Blowfly is the stage name and alternate persona of Clarence Reid (b. February 14, 1945 in Cochran, Georgia) who was a songwriter for many hit R&B acts in the 1960s and 1970s. As Blowfly, he has recorded numerous albums, mostly of sex-based parodies of other songs as well as original raps themed around sex. His stage name originated from his grandmother, who overheard him as a child singing "Do the Twist" as "Suck My Dick", … - Whitney Young
Whitney Moore Young Jr. was an American civil rights leader. He spent most of his career working to end employment discrimination in the United States and turning the National Urban League from a relatively passive civil rights organization into one that aggressively fought for equitable access to socioeconomic opportunity for the historically disenfranchised. - Ellen Glasgow
Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (April 22, 1873 - November 21, 1945) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American novelist from Richmond, Virginia. Beginning in 1897, Glasgow wrote 20 novels, mainly about life in Virginia. Her own education had been rudimentary, a fact Glasgow compensated for by reading widely. Today, her novels are regarded as more than just depictions of life in the Southern United States. Ellen maintained a close lifelong friendship with James Branch Cabell, … - Forrest McDonald
Forrest McDonald (born January 7, 1927), is an American historian who has written extensively on the early national period, on republicanism, and on the presidency. He is considered a leading conservative scholar. McDonald was born in Orange, Texas. He took his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees (1955) from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied with Fulmer Mood. He taught at Brown University (1959-67), Wayne State University (1967-76), … - Chief Tuskaloosa
Tuskaloosa, was a chief of the Choctaw tribe in what is now the U.S. state of Alabama. He is famous for leading a battle against conquistador Hernando de Soto. The modern-day city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is named for this Choctaw chief. The conquistador Hernando de Soto was appointed governor of Cuba by Charles I of Spain and was directed to conquer what is now the Southern United States. - John C. Campbell
John C. Campbell (born 1867; died 1919) was an American educator and reformer noted for his survey of social conditions in the southern Appalachian region of the United States during the early 1900s. Campbell studied education and theology in New England before travelling to the Southern United States. There he interviewed working people, particularly small farmers. After his death in 1919, Campbell's wife, Olive Dame Campbell, was determined to establish a folk school. - Major Robert Anderson
Robert Anderson (June 14, 1805 - October 26, 1871) was a Union Army officer in the American Civil War, known for his command of Fort Sumter at the start of the war. He is often referred to using his rank of that time, Major Robert Anderson. - Constance Baker Motley
Constance Baker Motley (14 September 1921-28 September 2005) was an African American civil rights activist, lawyer, judge, and state senator. She was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the ninth of twelve children. Her parents had immigrated from Nevis, in the Caribbean; her mother was the founder of the New Haven chapter of the NAACP. With financial help from a local philanthropist, Clarence Blakeslee, she initially attended Fisk University, … - Eddie Robinson
Eddie Gay Robinson (February 13 1919 - April 3 2007) was an African American college football coach. - Josephine Humphreys
Josephine Humphreys (born February 2, 1945) is an American novelist. A native of Charleston, South Carolina, which is also the setting of her novels "Rich in Love" and "The Fireman's Fair", Humphreys was educated at Ashley Hall (Class of 1963), studied creative writing with Reynolds Price at Duke University, and went on to attend Yale University and the University of Texas. From 1970 to 1977, before beginning her writing career, … - Charles W. Chesnutt
Charles Waddell Chesnutt (June 20, 1858 - November 15, 1932) was an author and political activist best known for novels and short stories from Fayetteville, North Carolina. His paternal grandfather was a white slaveholder. Chesnutt was of mixed race but could pass with relative ease for a white man. During that time in America he was considered "legally" black. Issues of miscegenation, "passing", and racial identity would influence his writing throughout his career. - J. D. Wilkes
Col. Joshua "J.D." Wilkes (b. April 17, 1972 in Baytown, Texas), a native of Paducah, Kentucky, is a visual artist, musician, and amateur filmmaker. - W. J. Cash
W.J. Cash, or Joseph Wilbur Cash, (May 2, 1900 - July 1, 1941) was an American author and journalist known primarily for his works about the American South. - Jerry Clower
Howard Gerald "Jerry" Clower (b. September 28 1926, Liberty, Mississippi - d. August 24 1998) was a popular country comedian best known for his stories of the rural South. Clower began a stint in the Navy immediately after graduating high school, then studied agriculture at Mississippi State University, where he played college football and was a member of Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity. After finishing school, Clower worked as a county agent and later as a seed salesman. - Leroy Pope Walker
LeRoy Pope Walker (February 7, 1817 - August 23, 1884) was the first Confederate States Secretary of War and issued the orders for the firing on Fort Sumter, which virtually began the American Civil War. Resigning within the year, he served briefly as brigadier general in the Confederate States Army, but saw no combat. A lawyer by profession, Walker was born in Huntsville, Alabama, the son of John Williams Walker and Matilda Pope, and a grandson of LeRoy Pope. - Lillian Smith
Lillian Smith was a writer and social critic of the Southern United States, known best for her best-selling novel "Strange Fruit" (1944). A white woman who openly embraced controversial positions on matters of race and gender equality, she was a southern liberal unafraid to criticize segregation and work toward the dismantling of Jim Crow laws, at a time when such actions almost guaranteed social ostracism. - Terry Sanford
James Terry Sanford (August 20 1917 - April 18 1998) was a Democratic politician from the Southern United States. A native of North Carolina, he was a North Carolina state senator from 1953 to 1961, governor of North Carolina from 1961 to 1965, and United States Senator from 1986 to 1993. Sanford was noted for his progressive leadership in the fields of civil rights and education. - Sue Monk Kidd
Sue Monk Kidd (born August 12, 1948) is a writer from the Southern United States, best known for her novel, "The Secret Life of Bees". Kidd, who was born in Sylvester, Georgia, graduated from Texas Christian University with a B.S. in nursing in 1970 and worked throughout her twenties as a Registered Nurse and college nursing instructor. - James Gregory
James Gregory (born 1946) is an American stand-up comedian commonly known to his fans as the Funniest Man in America. He was born in Lithonia, Georgia in 1946, and he worked as a salesperson until he was 36-years-old, when he first began introducing performers at The Punch Line comedy club in Atlanta. His first feature act at the Punch Line was February 17, 1982, … - Crazy Train
Jonathan P. Bolick (born September 29, 1971 in Charleston, South Carolina) is an American professional wrestler who goes by the ring name, Crazy Train, while wrestling on the independent circuit in the Southern United States, most notably the now defunct NWA Wildside. - Tom Joyner
Savoy magazine's 2002 Person of the Year, Joyner requires that each person who attends his city-to-city "sky show" bring proof of voter registration... or register at the door. He and members of his crew also have prompted major companies to stop discriminating against African Americas and Hispanics in advertising and are in the trenches with the U.S. Department of Health and Human services, raising health awareness among African Americans. But Joyner doesn't stop there. - Randall Kenan
Randall Kenan (b. March 12 1963) is a highly acclaimed African American author of fiction and nonfiction. Raised in a rural community in North Carolina, Kenan has focused his fiction on what it means to be black and gay in the southern United States. Among his books is the collection of short stories "Let the Dead Bury Their Dead", which was named a New York Times Notable Book in 1992. Kenan is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, … - Earl Black
Earl Black (b. 1942) is a professor of Political Science at Rice University and a well-known expert on the politics of the Southern United States, particularly as they relate to race. He and his twin brother, Merle Black, a professor at Emory University, have written several books on the politics of the South and the United States as a whole. Earl Black earned a B.A. at the University of Texas at Austin in 1964 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1968. - John Woods
John Woods (b. 1761, Bedford - d. December 16 1816, Brunswick County, Virginia) was a United States Representative from Pennsylvania. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in Washington County, Pennsylvania in December 1783, in Westmoreland County and Fayette County in 1784, in Allegheny County on December 16 1788, and in Bedford County in 1791. He practiced extensively in those counties, and assisted in laying out the city of Pittsburgh in 1784. - Playa Fly
Playa Fly (born Ibn Young on September 2, 1977) is a rapper from Memphis, Tennessee's South Parkway. Fly was, at one time, an associate of the Three 6 Mafia (then known as Lil' Fly), but he stopped collaborating in 1995 due to monetary disputes and philosophical differences after recording one album under the group's guidance. - Hodding Carter
William Hodding Carter, II (February 3, 1907 - April 4, 1972) was a prominent Southern progressive journalist and author. Carter was born in Hammond, the largest community in Tangipahoa Parish, in southeastern Louisiana, to William Hodding Carter, I (1881-1955), and the former Irma Dutartre. Carter died in Greenville of a heart attack at the age of sixty-five. He is interred in the Greenville Cemetery. - Justin Wilson
Justin E. Wilson (April 24, 1914 - September 5, 2001) was a southern American chef and humorist known for his brand of Cajun cuisine-inspired cooking and humor. He was a self-styled "raconteur". Wilson was born in Roseland in Tangipahoa Parish, one of the "Florida Parishes" east of Baton Rouge. He began his career as a safety engineer while he traveled throughout Acadiana. - Clyde Edgerton
Clyde Edgerton is an American author born on May 20, 1944 in Durham, North Carolina. He is a rock star, and his books are known for endearing characters, small-town Southern dialogue and realistic fire and brimstone religious sermons. His books are full of humor, while still respecting the characters' integrity. He grew up in the small, rural town of Bethesda, North Carolina. He was the only child of Truma and Ernest Edgerton, … - Charles S. Johnson
Charles Spurgeon Johnson (July 24, 1893 - October 27, 1956) was a distinguished American sociologist, first black president of historically black Fisk University, and a lifelong advocate for racial equality and the advancement of civil rights for African Americans and all other ethnic minorities. He preferred to work in coalition with liberal white groups in the South quietly as a "sidelines activist" concerned to get practical results. - E. H. Crump
Edward Hull Crump (October 2, 1874 - October 16, 1954) was a Memphis, Tennessee insurance broker, businessman, and political figure in the early 20th century. A native of Holly Springs, Mississippi, Crump moved to Memphis in 1892 and became a successful businessman, and began to make the political connections that would serve him for the rest of his life. He was a delegate to the Tennessee Democratic State Convention in 1902 and 1904. - Florence King
Florence Virginia King (b. January 5 1936, Washington, D.C.) is an American novelist, essayist and columnist. While her early writings focused on the American South and those who live there, much of King's later work has been published in "National Review". Her column in "National Review", "The Misanthrope's Corner", was known for "serving up a smorgasbord of curmudgeonly critiques about rubes and all else bothersome to the Queen of Mean", …
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