I really cannot stand it when people obscure the histories of Washington D.C. and Maryland and call them Northern. To do so is to obscure the powerfully deep role that enslavement and segregation had in shaping not only the region but American History.
I would argue we stop making the word "Condederacy" synonymous with "The South."
Many Southern folk cultural elements dominate Maryland's Appalachian Highlands, it's Southern coastal plain and The Eastern Shore. Central Maryland was built by trade in enslaved grown tobacco, wheat, corn and later the export of Black bodies to the west and south.
Maryland's food culture is 3/4 Upper South and Tidewater. The Southern obsession with horse racing began in Maryland, the banjo was plucked here, the country ham invented here, Black English was born here. The Chesapeake was the South's nursery.
And btw Deep South folks....Maryland, Virginia and tidewater North Carolina were over 180 years old when settlers from those states and South Carolina pushed west with cotton fever.
