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Dixie, also known as Dixieland or Dixie's Land, is a nickname for all or part of the Southern United States. While there is no official definition of this region (and the included areas have shifted over the years), or the extent of the area it covers, most definitions include the U.S. states below the Mason–Dixon line that seceded and comprised the Confederate States of America, almost always including the Deep South. The term became popularized throughout the United States by songs that nostalgically referred to the American South.
"Dixie" states in the modern sense usually refer to:
Although Maryland is not often considered part of Dixie today, it is below the Mason–Dixon line. If the origin of the term Dixie is accepted as referring to the region south and west of that line (which excludes Delaware despite it having been a slave state in 1861), Maryland lies within Dixie. It can be argued that Maryland was part of Dixie before the Civil War, especially culturally. In this sense, it would remain so into the 1970s, until an influx of people from the Northeast made the state and its culture significantly less Southern (especially Baltimore and the suburbs of Washington, D.C.). However, Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore still remain culturally Southern and share many traits associated with Dixie.. Retrieved March 7, 2025. As for the nation's capital itself: "Whether Washington should be defined as a Southern city has been a debate since the Civil War, when it was the seat of the Northern government but a hotbed of rebel sympathy", the Washington Post wrote in 2011. "The Washington area's 'Southernness' has fallen into steep decline, part of a trend away from strongly held regional identities. In the 150th anniversary year of the start of the Civil War, the region at the heart of the conflict has little left of its historic bond with Dixie." President Kennedy complained about the worst aspects of Washington's Northern and Southern influence, calling Washington, DC "a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm".
The Florida Big Bend includes a Dixie County. Certain parts of Oklahoma and Missouri that are considered more culturally Southern than the rest of these two states have been nicknamed Little Dixie (Oklahoma) and Little Dixie (Missouri).
The location and boundaries of Dixie have become increasingly subjective and mercurial. Today, Dixie is most often associated with parts of the Southern United States where traditions and legacies of the Confederate era and the Antebellum South live most strongly. The concept of Dixie as the location of a certain set of cultural assumptions, mindsets, and traditions was explored in the book The Nine Nations of North America (1981).
In terms of self-identification and appeal, the popularity of the word Dixie is declining. A 1976 study revealed that in an area of the South covering about 350,000 square miles (all of Mississippi and Alabama; almost all of Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina; and around half of Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Florida) the term reached 25% of the popularity of the term American in names of commercial business entities.John Shelton Reed, "The Heart of Dixie: An Essay in Folk Geography", in: "Social Forces" 54/4 (1976), pp. 925–939 A 1999 analysis found that between 1976 and 1999, in 19% of U.S. cities sampled, there was an increase of relative use of Dixie; in 48% of cities sampled, there was a decline; and no change was recorded in 32% of cities.Derek H. Alderman, Robert Maxwell Beavers, "Heart of Dixie Revisited: an Update on the Geography of Naming in the American South", in: "Southeastern Geographer" XXXlX/2 (1999), p. 196 A 2010 study found that in the course of 40 years, the area in question shrank to just , to the area where Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida meet.Christopher A. Cooper, H. Gibbs Knotts, "Declining Dixie: Regional Identification in the Modern American South", in: "Social Forces" 88/3 (2010), pp. 1083–1101 In 1976, at about
Sociologists Christopher A. Cooper and H. Gibbs Knotts surveyed all 50 states and the District of Columbia for the use of the words "Dixie" and "Southern" in business names. Unlike the survey conducted by John Shelton Reed, who concentrated on cities, Cooper and Knotts surveyed entire states using modern technology rather than the physical search of telephone books that were available to Reed. They excluded the chain Winn-Dixie from the study. Their data, within these parameters, resulted in a 13-state region which they divided into three tiers, from high to low scores. In the first tier were Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. The second tier was Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The third tier was Florida, Oklahoma, Virginia, and West Virginia. Christopher A. Cooper and H. Gibbs Knotts, Rethinking the Boundaries of the South. Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 4, Winter 2010, pp. 72–88
In 1965, the Washington Redskins football team (now the Washington Commanders) modified the team song, removing the word "Dixie" and a musical quotation from the song Dixie after a Black fan wrote to the owner of the team, describing the racial unrest that "Dixie" caused and asking for it to be stopped.
In the 21st century, several groups or organizations removed "Dixie" due to its association with the Confederacy. They included Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede, the music group Dixie Chicks, and the Dixie Classic Fair. The board of trustees at Dixie State University in Utah voted unanimously in December 2020 to change the name of the institution, with the Utah Legislature putting "Utah Tech University" into effect in 2022 to distance the university from the "Dixie" term.
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