Southern hospitality is a phrase used in American English to describe a cultural stereotype of the Southern United States, with residents perceived to show kindness, warmth, and welcoming of visitors to their homes, or to the South in general.
Origins
Although Southerners from all walks of life have been perceived as friendly for centuries, some like the writer Anthony Szczesiul claim that Southern hospitality "first existed as a narrowly defined body of social practices among the antebellum planters classes". As such, the origin of the practice was intimately tied to slavery in the United States. One analysis notes:
Over time however, the concept "developed into a discourse that stretches far beyond the image of the planter class", and the principles of Southern hospitality were eventually adopted by non-planter class and Southern African Americans as well, and incorporated into materials used to advertise destinations in the South to other African American tourists. Early travel writer Ernest Hamlin Abbott wrote in 1902, "as religious observances are in the South as naturally included in the hospitality of the home as anything else, so, conversely, hospitality in the South is an integral part of the church services".
Features
Some characteristics of Southern hospitality were described as early as 1835, when Jacob Abbott attributed the poor quality of taverns in the South to the lack of need for them, given the willingness of Southerners to provide for strangers.
Abbott further describes how the best stores of the house are at the disposal of visitors. going on to say that: