Bill Moyers
Dan Rather
Walter Cronkite
Ross Perot
Louis Armstrong
Robert Johnson
Leadbelly
Woody Guthrie
Renee Zellweger
Lyndon Johnson
Lady Bird Johnson
Without reading other replies and taking the “immediately” into account, my first 5 were:
Robert E. Lee
William Faulkner
Huey Long
Flannery O’Conner
Lewis Grizzard
(I did limit the Civil War guys to the first I thought of, else the whole list would be Confederate Generals and such).
Robert E. Lee
Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson
William Faulkner
Eudora Welty
Belle Watling
My grandmother (I know she’s not famous - but she epitomized Southern womanhood)
Edward R Murrow
Joanne Woodward
Ava Gardner
Robert Penn Warren*
Patricia Neal
James Agee
Erskine Caldwell
The West Tennessee Quintet:
Dixie Carter
Cybil Shepherd
Cherry Jones
Kathy Bates
Tina Turner
From the same “wide place in the road” in West Tennessee:
Alex Haley
Earle Palmer Halliburton
*One of a group of writers and poets know as The Fugitives during the 1920s and 1930s at Vanderbilt University.
After reading the thread title, I immediately thought:
- Faulkner
- Faulkner
- Faulkner
But I just read 4 of his novels last year, and I am absolutely infatuated (haunted?).
“that letter bringing with it that very September evening itself (and he soon needing, required, to say “No, neither aunt, cousin, nor uncle, Rosa. Miss Rosa Coldfield, an old lady that died young of outrage in 1866 one summer” and then Shreve said, “you mean she was no kin to you, no kin to you at all, that there was actually one Southern Bayard or Guinevere who was no kin to you? then what did she die for?” and that not Shreve’s first time, nobody’s first time in Cambridge since September: Tell us about the South. What’s it like there. What do the do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all) - that very September evening when…”
(then Shreve again, “Wait. Wait. You mean this old gal, this Aunt Rosa-”
“Miss Rosa,” Quentin said,
“All right all right. -that that this old dame, this Aunt Rosa-”
“Miss Rosa, I tell you.”
“All right all right all right. - that this old - this Aunt R-- All right all right all right all right. that hadn’t been out there, hadn’t set foot in the house even in forty-three years, yet not only said there was somebody hidden in it but found somebody that would believe her, would drive that twelve miles out there in a buggy to see if she was right or not?”
“Yes,” Quentin said.
…)
Skipping to the bottom without reading other answers so as not to be influenced…
Robert E. lee
Mark Twain
W
Bill Clinton
Foghorn Leghorn
Billy Graham
Johnny Cash
Dolly Parton
Southern Men -
Louis Armstrong
Wynton Marsalis
Tennesee Williams
Southern Women -
Flannery O’Conner
Jesse Norman
Sharyn McCrumb
Walker Percy, Robert Johnson
That’s all that’s coming to mind right now.
Before I looked at anyone else’s, these were the first six of each sex who popped into my mind:
Male:
Ronnie Van Zandt
Lightnin’ Hopkins
Truman Capote
Robert E. Lee
Robert Johnson
Colonel Sanders
Female:
Harper Lee
Flannery O’Connor
Rosa Parks
Marie Laveau
Zora Neale Hurston
Frances King
I made the mistake of reading all the posts in this thread so my entries are probably influenced by them. In any case, here the ones–for better or worse–that came to mind.
Male
William Faulkner
Robert Penn Warren
George Wallace
Dr. Martin Luther King
Huey Long
David Duke
Greg Allman
Duane Allman
Dickie Betts
Ronnie Van Zandt
Sam Ervin
Strom Thurmond
Rev. Jerry Falwell
Rev. Pat Robertson
Rev. Jim Bakker
Bill Clinton
Jimmy Carter
Little Richard
Otis Redding
James Brown
Johnny Cash
Those creepy in-bred “mountain folk” from Deliverance
Atticus Finch
The Hatfields
The McCoys
Female
Harper Lee
Patsy Cline
Dolly Parton
Loretta Lynn
Blanche Dubois
Rosa Parks
Paula Jones
Susan Sarandon
Holly Hunter
This girl I knew in college who was from North Carolina and resembled Holly Hunter and who I would’ve asked out were it not for the fact she had too many issues.
I excluded Texas because it was a large sub-category by itself and Missouri which is a border state that can be more easily included as part of the Midwest.
Which states are considered Southern states?
I was thinking of Colonel Sanders. Is Julia Roberts a southener?