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In 1900 the South was only 15% urban ; ;

in 1950 it had become 47.1% urban.

In a mere half-century the South has more than tripled its urban status.

There is a New South emerging, a South losing the folksy traditions of an agrarian society with the rapidity of an avalanche -- especially within recent decades.

As the New South snowballs toward further urbanization, it becomes more and more homogeneous with the North -- a tendency which Willard Thorp terms `` Yankeefication '', as evidenced in such cities as Charlotte, Birmingham, and Houston.

It is said that, even at the present stage of Southern urbanization, such a city as Atlanta is not distinctly unlike Columbus or Trenton.

Undoubtedly even the old Southern stalwart Richmond has felt the new wind: William Styron mentions in his latest novel an avenue named for Bankhead McGruder, a Civil War general, now renamed, in typical California fashion, `` Buena Vista Terrace ''.

The effects of television and other mass media are erasing regional dialects and localisms with a startling force.

As for progress, the `` backward South '' can boast of Baton Rouge, which increased its population between 1940 and 1950 by two hundred and sixty-two percent, to 126,000, the second largest growth of the period for all cities over 25,000.