PROSPERITY AND CIVIL RIGHTS 3 page

Elsewhere in the region, the pattern of settlement is less varied. Black Americans are an important force in all the region's cities. But families of Italian and Eastern European descent are more apparent in urban areas outside New York City.

Recently the region's heavy industries have fallen on hard times. Like the factories of New England, these industries have found it hard to compete with cheaper goods made elsewhere. Even so, the Middle Atlantic region has managed to propser. It has done so partly by building new industries such as drug manufacturing and communications.

THE SOUTH

If all regions of the United States differ from one another, the South could be said to differ most. At several times in the nation's history, in fact, the region has shown a pride in its differences that has approached defiance and even blossomed into southern nationalism. The South was devastated socially and economically in the mid-19th century by the American Civil War. Nevertheless, it has remained distinct, and it played a major role in forming the character of America from before the War of Independence to the Civil War.

Perhaps the most basic difference between the South and other regions is geographic. Southerners generally enjoy more ways free of frost than northerners do. The South also has more rainfall than the West. A southerner once described his region as a land of yellow sunlight, clouded horizons and steady haze. He thought the climate an inspiration for the southern spirit of romance.

The first Europeans to settle this sultry region were, as in New England, mostly English Protestants. These were Anglican rather than Calvinist, however, and few of them came to America in search of religious freedom. Most sought the opportunity to farm the land and live in reasonable comfort. Their early way of life resembled that of English farmers, whom they often imitated, in the days before the Industrial Revolution. The South emulated England as much as New England prided itself on its distinction from it.

In coastal areas some settlers grew wealthy by raising and selling crops such as tobacco and cotton. In time some of them established large farms, called plantations, which required the work of many laborers. To supply this need, plantation owners came to rely on slaves shipped by the Spanish, Portuguese and English from Africa. Slavery is unjust. The fact remains, however, that it became a part of southern life in the United States, as it did throughout Central and South America. Nevertheless, the great majority of southern agriculture was carried out on single family farms, just as it was in the North, and not on large plantations.

The South played a major role in the American Revolution of the 1770s. Soon afterward, it provided the young United States with four of its first presidents, including George Washington. After about 1800, however, the apparent interests of the manufacturing North and the more agrarian South began to diverge in obvious ways. The North became more and more industrial, while the South was wedded to the land.

In the cotton fields and slave quarters of the region, black Americans created a new folk music, Negro spirituals. These songs were

religious in nature and some bore similarities to a later form of black American music, jazz.

As the century wore on, slavery became a steadily more serious problem for the South. "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate," asserted Virginia's Thomas Jefferson, than that black people "are to be free." As the United States expanded, Jefferson's words came to seem an increasingly accurate forecast. Nonetheless, many southern leaders defended the slave system; to them, an attack on slavery seemed an unwarranted attack on the southern way of life.

The issue led to a national political crisis in 1860. Eleven southern states from Virginia to Texas left the federal union to form a nation of their own. The result was the most terrible war in the history of the United States, the Civil War (1861-1865). With all its largest and most important cities in ashes, the South finally surrendered. It was then forced to accept many changes during the period of Reconstruction (rebuilding), which lasted officially until 1877. Many of the subsequent political alignments in the United States stem from the passions and perceptions of this period.

The leaders of Reconstruction were members of the Republican party in the national government. They not only ended slavery, but planned to put black southerners on an equal footing with whites and to redistribute old plantation lands. White southerners opposed and resented such efforts and the Republicans who supported them. For the next century, white southerners voted for the Democratic party with such fervor that their region became known as the "Solid South."

For a time, black Americans gained a voice in southern government. By the end of the 19th century, though, they faced a new barrier to equality. Southern towns and cities refined and legalized the practice of racial segregation. Blacks attended separate schools from whites, rode in separate railroad cars and even drank at separate water fountains.

Gradual change did come, however, and this time from within. It began in about 1900 as the region turned to manufacturing of many different kinds. By 1914, the South had at least 15,000 factories and the number was increasing, although the population remained largely rural. At about the same time, many black Americans began moving from southern farms to the cities of the North.

The pace of change quickened throughout the first half of this century. Coastal sections of Florida and Georgia became vacation centers for Americans from other regions. In cities such as Atlanta, Georgia, and Memphis, Tennessee, the populations soared. For decades some southern leaders had been speaking of a "New South." Now it seemed, a "New South" was coming into being.

The greatest change of all took place after the return of the veterans of World War II. In the 1950s and 1960s, after years of black protest, Supreme Court rulings and the passage of sweeping civil rights legislation, the obvious forms of segregation came to an end. For the first time since Reconstruction, blacks gained a greater voice in local government throughout the South. Although their struggle for equality had not ended, it was finally having an effect.

All these changes produced many tensions among southerners. In the period between the first and second World Wars, a southern literary movement arose which gave the nation some of its greatest writers of this century. Novelists such as Thomas Wolfe, Robert Penn Warren, Carson McCullers and William Faulkner spun stories of southern pride and displacement. Playwrights such as Tennessee Williams built dramas around the same themes. Why this literary outpouring? Georgia's Flannery O'Connor, a major novelist, once explained it this way: "When a southerner wants to make a point, he tells a story; it's actually his way of reasoning and dealing with experience."

Today sleek, new, high-rise buildings crowd the skylines of cities such as Atlanta, Georgia and Little Rock, Arkansas. Late model cars cover the parking lots of iron mills in Birmingham, Alabama, and oil refineries in Houston, Texas. Along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of Florida, builders put up new apartments for vacationers from almost everywhere. The South is booming as never before.

THE MIDWEST

For the first 75 years of American history, the area west of the Appalachian mountains was not really a region at all. It was a beacon summoning the nation to its future and, later, measuring how far the United States had come.

In what are now the states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, people moving to the frontier found gently rolling countryside. If tickled with a hoe, they said, the land would laugh with the harvest. As they moved west across the Mississippi River, though, the land became flatter and more barren. Here the horizons were so broad that they seemed to swallow travelers in space.

The key to the region was the mighty Mississippi itself. In the early years it acted as a lifeline, moving settlers to new homes and great amounts of grain and other goods to market. In the 1840s, Samuel Clemens spent his boyhood beside the Mississippi. Writing under the name of Mark Twain, he later described the wonders of rafting on the river in his novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

As the Midwest developed, it turned into a cultural crossroads. The region attracted not only easterners but also Europeans. A great many Germans found their way to eastern Missouri and areas farther north. Swedes and Norwegians settled in western Wisconsin and many parts of Minnesota. The Irish came and so did Finns, Poles and Ukrainians. As late as 1880, 73 percent of the residents of Wisconsin had parents who had been born in foreign countries.

Gradually, the Midwest became known as a region of small towns, barbed-wire fences to keep in livestock, and huge rectangular fields of wheat and corn. Midwestern farmers raised more than half of the nation's wheat and oats and nearly half of its cattle and dairy cows. A hectare of land in central Illinois could produce twice as much corn as a hectare of fertile soil in Virginia. For these reasons, the region was nicknamed the nation's breadbasket

Midwesterners are praised as being open, friendly, straightforward and "down-to-earth." Their politics tend to be cautious, though the caution could sometimes be peppered with protest. The region gave birth to the Republican party, formed in the 1850s to oppose the extending of slavery into western lands. The Midwest also played an important role in the Progressive Movement at the turn of this century. Progressives were farmers, merchants and other members of the middle class who generally sought less corrupt, fairer and more efficient government.

Perhaps because of their location, midwesterners lacked the interest in foreign affairs shown by many Americans in the financial and immigration centers of Boston and New York. In the years after World War I, many leaders argued that the nation should stay out of overseas quarrels. This movement, called isolationism, died with Japan's surprise attack on the United States in 1941. Yet the Midwest is still remembered as the region least ready to rally to foreign causes.

Today the hub of the region remains Chicago, Illinois, the nation's third largest city. This major Great Lakes port has long been a connecting point for rail lines and air traffic to far-flung parts of the nation. At the heart of the city stands the world's tallest building, Sears Tower. This skyscraper soars a colossal 1,454 feet (447 meters) into the air.

THE SOUTHWEST

The Southwest differs from the Midwest in three primary ways. First, it is drier. Second, it is emptier. Third, the populations of several of the southwestern states comprise a different ethnic mix.

Rain-laden winds blow across most of the region only in the spring. During that season, the rain may be so abundant that rivers rise over their banks. In summer and autumn, however, little rain falls in much of Arizona and New Mexico and the western sections of Texas. Only in the river valleys of those areas can any intensive farming take place.

Partly because this region is drier, it is much less densely populated than the Midwest. Outside the cities, the region is a land of wide open spaces. One can travel for miles in some areas without seeing signs of human life.

Parts of the Southwest once belonged to Mexico. The United States gained this land following a war with its southern neighbor between 1846 and 1848. Today three southwestern states lie along the Mexican border—Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. All have a larger Spanish-speaking population than other regions except southern California.

THE WEST

Americans have long regarded the West as a "last frontier." Yet California has a history of European settlement much older than that of most mid western states. Spanish priests and soldiers first set up missions along California's coast a few years before the start of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, California and Oregon entered the Union ahead of many states to the east.

In the West, scenic beauty exists on a grand scale. All eleven states are partly mountainous, and in Washington, Oregon and northern California the mountains present some startling contrasts. To the west of the mountains, winds off the Pacific Ocean carry enough moisture to keep the land well watered. To the east, however, the land is very dry. Parts of western Washington receive 20 times

the amount of rainfall received in eastern Washington. The wet climate near the coast supports great forests of trees such as redwoods and stately Douglas firs.

In many areas the population is sparse. Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah and Idaho—the Rocky Mountain States—occupy about 15 percent of the nation's total land area. Yet these states, so filled with scenic wonders, have only about three percent of the nation's total population.

Except for Hawaii, the westernmost states have all been settled primarily by people from other parts of the nation. Thus, the region has an interesting mix of ethnic groups. In southern California—also considered part of the Southwest—people of Mexican descent play a role in nearly every part of the economy. In the valleys north of San Francisco, Italian families loom large in the growing of grapes and the bottling and selling of California wine. Americans of Japanese descent traditionally managed truck farms in northern California and Oregon, and Chinese Americans were once mostly known as farmers, laborers and the owners of laundries and restaurants. In recent years large numbers of the younger generation have achieved positions of prominence in medicine, law, engineering scientific research, music and many other fields. In the 1980s, large numbers of people from Korea and Southeast Asia settled in California, mainly around Los Angeles.

Hawaii is the only state of the Union where Asian-Americans outnumber residents of European stock. Among Asian-Americans, those of Japanese descent are the largest group. People of Chinese and Filipino ancestry are also well represented.

New Englanders have left their mark on much of the West. Many northwesterners prize "Yankee" virtues such as shrewdness and thrift. In much of California, however, life is more flamboyant. Some observers trace this quality to the gambling instincts of the Gold Rush of 1848, which first brought many Americans west in search of gold discovered there. Others say that the Gold Rush did not last long enough to leave a lasting mark on the culture of the state. These observers claim that the California experience is mostly the result of a sunny climate and the self-confidence that comes of success.

The success is not much debated. In 1860 El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula was a hodgepodge of adobe huts on the edge of a sandy wilderness. A century and a quarter later, Los Angeles had become the second most populous city in the nation. To millions of people, the city means Hollywood, the center of the film industry. Yet Los Angeles also produces aircraft parts, electronic equipment and other products of today's technology.

Fueled by growth in Los Angeles and smaller cities such as San Jose, California is now larger than every other state in size of population. Still the richness of America is not measured exclusively in numbers but in the diversity and resourcefulness of its people from all the various regions.

URBAN CULTURE: THE AMERICAN CITY