Is Missouri a Southern state or a Midwestern state culturally?

[NYCButterfinger]

Is Missouri a Southern state or a Midwestern state culturally? A friend of mine says that is is a Southern state due to it's traditions (Ozarks, Branson, Springfield). I think it is a Midwestern state (St. Louis, the fall weather, etc.). Is it Southern or Midwestern?

[safeinOhio]

1. Like most mid-west states

the rural areas are southern and urban areas are northern.

[ColesCountyDem]

7. Like IL, it distinctly 'southern', south of I-70. n/t

[Art_from_Ark]

8. Springfield is Southern

St. Louis is Eastern
Kansas City is Mid-Western
Joplin is neither Southern nor Northern
Columbia is a college town.

[Adrahil]

16. Have a bunch of friends from Joplin...

They all definitely think of themselves as Midwesterners. But they admit that much of the state has a Southern mindset.

[HuckleB]

2. All the folks I've known from Missouri are classic midwesterners, but...

From: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/states-i-refuse-to-acknowledge-as-midwestern

Missouri is Dixie, or maybe it’s the West. Missouri was a slave state that stayed in the Union. It’s like they’re being deliberately confusing. St. Louis is the “Gateway to the West,” which means that 90 percent of Missouri is “the West.” Then again, I like Mark Twain. Maybe Missouri can be Midwestern. No. Missouri is out. Why? Because of Joe Scarborough and his insistence on pronouncing it “Mizurruh.”

[dzhuboi]

3. I wonder about West Virginia

Sure, it wasn't part of the Confederacy, but these days, it's more "Southern" than Virginia itself.

[LiberalArkie]

4. Most of the time Missouri is more southern than Arkansas. More like between Louisiana and Arkansas.

[loyalsister]

5. This and that

Missouri is an extremely diverse state, and the urban centers are very distinct. KC (pop) is more midwestern and St. Louis has more of an eastern flavor. The suburbs of KC have a southern feel. Some people cal it a cow town.
Southern MO truly is 2 flavors of southern. The boot heel is decidedly southern in the classic sense while the southwestern side is the TX, OK brand.
Generally various MO regions culturally reflect the surrounding states.

[hobbit709]

6. In the cities more midwestern. In the boonies-forget it.

[snooper2]

21. I grew up there, the whole state sucks ass LOL

Why it's called Missery

St. Louis alone has lost half it's population since 1950...Left that state as soon as I could

[JCMach1]

9. Linguistically, both... with even some overlap from the West...

[hatrack]

10. Really depends where you are . . . .

Rural areas are conservative to extremely conservative, generally Catholic along the Missouri River, generally Lutheran north, evangelical south. The further south and more outstate rural you go, the more southern it gets - hardscrabble, dirt-poor southern in some areas.

Cities are generally Midwestern and Democratic, with the exception of Springfield (AG world headquarters).

There's also a strong east/west split. The old saw is that St. Louis is the westernmost eastern city, and Kansas City is the easternmost western city. Really big differences between the two. The former is very much a school tie, where' d your father go to high school sort of town, more formal and more cliqueish. The latter is much less formal, a little more mobile, but also somewhat blander and suburban.

[jwirr]

11. Having done some genealogy in MO I would say

southern. Many of the immigrants to the state came from the south.

During the Civil War MO virtually had a civil war within their own state. Fighting among themselves. Very bitter heritage. I suspect that those lines are still drawn that way even today.

It certainly would be interesting to see if the factions still exist.

[loyalsister]

17. "It certainly would be interesting to see if the factions still exist"

Sort of....

The arrangement of schools within Columbia (the most central city) tells an interesting, convoluted story.

Three of the elementary schools (USS Grant, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas Hart Benton) carry some interesting symbolism. Grant and Lee sit respectively on the West and East sides of the central city. Benton sits northeast of both.

Also, it happens that there was conflict between what was then called Christian college and the university which are situated in a north- south arrangement only a couple of miles apart.

Although I don't think it was at all intentional, the placements of some of the elementary schools carry some interesting symbolism.

Grant on the west end in the direction of KS. KC sits right on the border mostly in MO and partly on the KS side. Of course, KS was one of the bloodiest, fiercest, abolitionist states during the Civil War. In fact the long standing feud between KU and MU had it's roots in the civil war era. In a newer interesting twist they no longer play against each other because MU joined the southern conference.

That Lee is on the East side is pretty ironic considering that it is in the direction of STL, and I tend to see STL as a more sophisticated region culturally and politically. KC has a progressive voice and some interesting cultural aspects, but there is so much rural territory that it maintains a southern feel. I think the OK influences crept northward and sort of hopped over the inner city.

Today, the KC suburbs have grown significantly and have a great deal of influence in the region. The northern, very rural suburbs approach rural Iowa and have a bit of a southwest feel. Meanwhile, STL is a a much more eastern region with less rural suburbs. Part of STL lies in Illinois. I tend to see STL as more sophisticated than KC.

The southern part of the state is surrounded by: AK, TN, KY, and OK, and essentially merge with the cultures of those states where they meet and well into MO.

KC and STL are both very segregated and the other cities and towns have a robust white majorities (Columbia, which is a very liberal city, is much more diverse due to the university influences). And yet, it is situated within what was once called Little Dixie. The region that had the largest slave population during the Civil War.

Generally, cultural ambiguity is justified by the internal confusion of such a regionally distinct state.

[jwirr]

20. Thank you. Very interesting. Gives us some background

regarding what is happening in Ferguson MO and says clearly that the factions still exist.

I attended my first 4 years of college at a MO-Lutheran Synod school and in one of my black history courses researched Civil War era literature from that organization. Not good. I do not remember exactly what it all said but they were pro-south. Their headquarters was and is located in STL.

Needless to say I was very upset. They are still one of the most conservative Lutheran groups but even that does not justify where they stood during that war. No Christian church has a right to support slavery - even if many of them did.

The first thing I did when the protests started in Ferguson MO was go into MSLC site and see if they were involve and on what side. In the at least they were some of those ministers who were helping on the streets.

My family tree that move from the south to MN and then to MO would probably have been divided by the arguments. Some of them were Quakers and other Revivalists.

[The Midway Rebel]

12. Both!

The first wave of settlers beginning after the War of 1812 were nearly exclusively from the Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and the Carolinas. Also mostly pro slavery. The second wave had lots more folks from the Old Northwest and lots of German immigrants. It was culturally a slave state and tied to the South by slavery, but at the same time economically tied to the North and eventually the Southwest through trade and commerce. Missouri's western border saw the first of the fighting that led to the war over slavery in the mid 1850s.

It has two major cities that are culturally different. Kansas City in the west tends to have more of a Southern flair. It was the western end of what was called Little Dixie which runs along the the Missouri River counties from about mid state and west. It is the home of barbeque, blues, baseball, and a distinct style of jazz. The region marks the trail heads for the Santa Fe, California and Oregon trails and it is a city that looks to the west.

St. Louis, was settled by a very large German immigration that began in the 1840s. It is more midwestern and northern even though it is on the east side of the state. Culturally speaking the center of the state and the Ozarks tend to be very Southern.

[mnhtnbb]

13. I lived in Missouri for 6 years --St. Joseph, north of Kansas City--where

the Pony Express started and Jesse James ended (so the town said).

I made the mistake of thinking, when we moved there, that it was the 'Midwest'.
Nope. It's definitely the South...and not just from the tradition of Ozarks, Branson,
Springfield. Remember the Missouri Compromise from your US History class? Having been a slave-holding
state, it is the South.

The Missouri Compromise was an effort by Congress to defuse the sectional and political rivalries triggered by the request of Missouri late in 1819 for admission as a state in which slavery would be permitted. At the time, the United States contained twenty-two states, evenly divided between slave and free. Admission of Missouri as a slave state would upset that balance; it would also set a precedent for congressional acquiescence in the expansion of slavery. Earlier in 1819, when Missouri was being organized as a territory, Representative James Tallmadge of New York had proposed an amendment that would ultimately have ended slavery there; this effort was defeated, as was a similar effort by Representative John Taylor of New York regarding Arkansas Territory.
Did You Know?

For his work on the Missouri Compromise, Senator Henry Clay became known as the “Great Pacificator."

The extraordinarily bitter debate over Missouri’s application for admission ran from December 1819 to March 1820. Northerners, led by Senator Rufus King of New York, argued that Congress had the power to prohibit slavery in a new state. Southerners like Senator William Pinkney of Maryland held that new states had the same freedom of action as the original thirteen and were thus free to choose slavery if they wished. After the Senate and the House passed different bills and deadlock threatened, a compromise bill was worked out with the following provisions: (1) Missouri was admitted as a slave state and Maine (formerly part of Massachusetts) as free, and (2) except for Missouri, slavery was to be excluded from the Louisiana Purchase lands north of latitude 36°30′.

The Missouri Compromise was criticized by many southerners because it established the principle that Congress could make laws regarding slavery; northerners, on the other hand, condemned it for acquiescing in the expansion of slavery (though only south of the compromise line). Nevertheless, the act helped hold the Union together for more than thirty years. It was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which established popular sovereignty (local choice) regarding slavery in Kansas and Nebraska, though both were north of the compromise line. Three years later, the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, on the ground that Congress was prohibited by the Fifth Amendment from depriving individuals of private property without due process of law.

http://www.history.com/topics/missouri-compromise

[Facility Inspector]

14. Spiritually

Crossing the Mississippi River means (to me) that I am closer to the southland than Yankeeland.

[loyalsister]

18. There are a few spots to cross it...

You can cross it in Little Dixie, down in the bootheel, and in STL, which STL (which I would say could currently be the yankeeist territory of the state).
Since there were 2 rivers trading slaves in the central region, we have Little Dixie...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Dixie_(Missouri)

[marmar]

15. But even "Midwest" is split.

...... there's the Great Lakes Region (Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin etc) and plains states like Iowa, Nebraska etc that are all lumped together as "Midwest", even though there are lots of differences. Michigan has much more in common with its Canadian neighbor Ontario than it does with Iowa.

[HereSince1628]

31. When I was a kid, there was a region called the Great Plains

that doesn't seem to exist much in common usage anymore. Limited water availability, and with it the western reaches of the eastern deciduous forest really seems like a biogeographic hallmark of the boundary of the Great Plains.

BUt it seems the great distances involved in "midwestern" commerce and the historic transportation lines that overcame those distances are mostly responsible for a lot of the functional divisions of the midwest.

I think modern rail and interstate trucking tend to obscure the importance of the Great Lakes and the "great" rivers that originally oriented commerce and the 'communication' between cities that led to regional cultures.

[logosoco]

19. I have lived here my whole life and I don't know!

The weather and the topography is very diverse, that is for sure!
I have lived in and around St. Louis county and city the first half of my life, and now in a semi-rural (but becoming more suburban as time goes on) area that has many rednecks but is also usually supports Democrats.

This is why I don't like the times when people lump everyone together, like Florida and Texas seem to have more than their share of nuts, but we can't say everyone is like that.

I love the look of the Arch, always means coming home to me! But I do not know why they say it represents the gateway to the west! We seem too eastern to be midwest! Perhaps we should be the far east!

It must have been pretty interesting around here during the Civil War!!!

Branson is a joke to me, but I guess it helps the economy for the working people down there. The Ozarks has an interesting set of people, including a very large (land wise) commune!

America is like a mutt, and that is what makes it so great!

[oswaldactedalone]

22. Always been proud to say that St. Louis

is my original hometown. My Dad was a St. Louis native, born in 1918, and I always felt he was a mid-westerner, definitely not Southern. Still, much of Missouri is as rural as any place in the deep south. BTW, he pronounced it Missouree and not the other way. The other way makes no sense.

[IphengeniaBlumgarten]

28. Grew up in Columbia...

We said Muh-ZUR-uh. Your pronunciation is odd to me. But I accept your variation as valid, too. (Suspect it may be related to when our families arrived in the area. Mine since early 1800s. Yours?)

[leftyladyfrommo]

23. KC and St. Louis are very Midwestern. We would never say we are Southern.

I'm not sure about the very southern part of the state. I would say that Springfield and Jefferson City are Midwestern.

To us Southern would be Texas and the Carolinas and all those places where people talk Southern. I'm not sure about Arkansas. I love that Arkansas dialect. It's so soft and beautiful but it's completely different than Southern drawl.

Kansas City is mostly made up of rural folk and lots of people here have come from Iowa and Indiana. St. Louis is much more of a "big city" and has a very different feel to it. Kansas City metropolitan area is now bigger than St. Louis but people here are much more like farming people. They are very patient and very polite. And pretty conservative about just about everything.

Mostly.

[REP]

26. Bullshit.

I believe you're up north, where people are pretty country, but in the actual city where I was born and raised, it's not full of hicks with cows in the streets. It hasn't been full of farming people since my ancestors built some of the first buildings in Westport. And while up north, yes, they're a little backward politically, in the city, not so much.

[leftyladyfrommo]

30. What would I know

Last edited Thu Sep 17, 2015, 10:24 AM - Edit history (1)

I've just lived here 45 years.

I didn't say it was full of hicks. But it's not like living in Seattle or LA or New York.
We do have the American Royal every year and then there are cattle and horses in the streets.

And there are lots of trendy areas here in town where mostly younger people hang. There are lofts and condos and artsy areas with great places to eat or drink and hang out with friends. And there are areas with some serious big city kind of problems with drugs and gangs. This is a big city.

And people here are friendly and polite. Mostly.

I like Kansas City. It'seems a good place to live. But if someone asked me I would say I'm Midwestern not Southern.

[closeupready]

24. Southern. The unofficial dividing line between what's thought of as

"North" and what's thought of as "South" (at least in Illinois) is whatever the latitude is of Springfield, Illinois. The customs, families, even speech patterns ... different enough to be noticeable, at least to natives of the area.

On edit, I realize I didn't even answer your question, lol.

Missouri is Southern, but I suppose it's also Midwestern. Kind of a border state like Kentucky or Tennessee.

[REP]

25. Midwestern, with weather from Hell

I'm from there.

[LonePirate]

27. MO is a lot like the old PA insult.

With KC approximating Pittsburgh and St. Louis approximating Philadelphia with Alabama separating the two pairs of cities in the rest of the state.

[Humanist_Activist]

29. Its both and neither, depending, St. Louis is a "Eastern" Midwest City, Kansas City more a...

"Western" Midwest city, and then there are the dots of like Columbia. Generally, urban areas are Midwestern, rural areas much more southern, but there's also the 1-70 line. Even the rural folks can be divided.