Little Dixie (Missouri)

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Little Dixie is a 17 county region of Missouri found predominately along the Missouri River. It is here where Missouri’s most important Southern cultural traditions mirrored those of the upper South. Southerners, primarily from the hemp and tobacco districts of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, settled Little Dixie and transplanted their agricultural, political, architectural traditions and social and slave customs. While on average Missouri’s slave population was only 10 percent, in Little Dixie county and township slave populations ranged between 20 and 50 percent. By the outbreak of the Civil War, counties such as Saline and Lafayette had slave populations between 30 and 40 percent and the major cash crop was hemp. In Lafayette County, locals went so far as to declare hemp as king and dedicating all production to it while forgoing necessary food production. Other Little Dixie Counties, such as Platte, Howard, and Ralls, grew large quantities of tobacco in the millions of pounds on great plantations with 20 or more slaves. Some farmers and planters even grew cotton and sent their surplus down the Missouri River to St. Louis and New Orleans. Planters often named their great estates, such as Greenwood, Redstone, Oakwood, and Sylvan Villa in Howard County. In Boone, Cooper, Saline, and Platte Counties, Prairie Park, Prairie View, Pleasant Green, Oak Grove, Locust Grove, and Greenwood plantations still stand to this day. Often on these large farms slave populations ranged between 15 and 70 slaves with acreages of 500 or 2000 or more. The “heart” of the Little Dixie is traditionally accepted as Boone, Howard, Audrain, Ralls, and Monroe Counties.

[edit] Ballad

The Ballad of Little Dixie

         It's the heart of Missouri, blooded of three,
         Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
         It's a tall spare man on a blue-grass hoss.
         It's sugar-cured ham without raisin sauce.
         It's coon dog, coon, persimmon tree.
         It's son or brother named Robert E. Lee.
         It's tiger stalking a jay-hawk bird.
         It's the best hog-calling that ever you heard.
         It's fiddler fiddlin' you out of your seat,
         Fiddler fiddlin' you off your feet.
         It's bluebird singing in a hawthorn thicket.
         It's vote to a man the Democratic ticket.
         It's crisp brown cracklin's and hot corn pone.
         It's catfish fried clean off the bone.
         It's hominy grits and none of your scrapple.
         It's mellow pawpaws and the Jonathan apple.
         It's sorghum sweetenin' and belly-warming corn.
         It's old Jeff Davis a-blowin' on his horn.
         Unreconstructed it rares and bites
         At touch of a rein that would curb its rights.
         It's come in, stranger, draw up a chair;
         There ain't no hurry and we'll all get there.

[edit] Athletic Conference

"Little Dixie" was also the name of a former Missouri athletic conference. The Little Dixie Conference, or LDC, was made up of the following area high schools:

South Callaway HS (Mokane)
Southern Boone HS (Ashland)
Harrisburg HS
Hallsville HS
Community R-VI HS (Laddonia)
Sturgeon HS

The Little Dixie Conference disbanded prior to the 2006 fall sports season. All schools (except Community and Sturgeon) formed the new Mid-Missouri Conference along with North Callaway and Tipton high schools.