Deep South

American  

noun

1. the southeastern part of the U.S., including especially South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

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Deep South British  

noun

1. the SE part of the US, esp South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana

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Deep South Cultural  

1. The southernmost tier of states in the South: South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Before the Civil War, these states were centers of cotton production and slavery. All of them seceded from the United States before the firing on Fort Sumter. They are sometimes distinguished from the states of the Upper South (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas), which contained proportionately fewer slaves prior to the Civil War and which seceded only after the firing on Fort Sumter.

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Deep South

It’s not your imagination: This summer has been unusually sticky in Los Angeles, with humidity levels making conditions feel more like the Deep South than Southern California.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 27, 2026

Meanwhile, the Deep South consisted of a landowning class, some of whom relocated from slave plantations in the Caribbean, who formed an "oligarchic, top-down society".

From BBC ● Jul. 4, 2026

Local organizers understood the strategic importance of finding a sympathetic plaintiff to challenge bus segregation in the Deep South.

From Salon ● May 20, 2026

This story was produced in partnership with Deep South Today, a network of nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsrooms in Louisiana and Mississippi.

From Slate ● May 5, 2026

It was taboo because it exposed the inherent contradictions of the Virginia position, which was much closer to the position of the Deep South than Madison wished to acknowledge, even to himself.

From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis