title: Southern United States

text: Nearly all Southerners, black and white, suffered economically as a result of the Civil War. Within a few years cotton production and harvest was back to pre-war levels, but low prices through much of the 19th century hampered recovery. They encouraged immigration by Chinese and Italian laborers into the Mississippi Delta. While the first Chinese entered as indentured laborers from Cuba, the majority came in the early 20th century. Neither group stayed long at rural farm labor. The Chinese became merchants and established stores in small towns throughout the Delta, establishing a place between white and black.


title: Southern United States

text: Migrations continued in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among both blacks and whites. In the last two decades of the 19th century about 141,000 blacks left the South, and more after 1900, totaling a loss of 537,000. After that the movement increased in what became known as the Great Migration from 1910 to 1940, and the Second Great Migration through 1970. Even more whites left the South, some going to California for opportunities and others heading to Northern industrial cities after 1900. Between 1880 and 1910, the loss of whites totaled 1,243,000. Five million more left between 1940 and 1970.


title: Southern United States

text: From 1890 to 1908, ten of the eleven former Confederate states, along with Oklahoma upon statehood, passed disenfranchising constitutions or amendments that introduced voter registration barriers such as poll taxes, residency requirements and literacy tests that were hard for minorities to meet. Most African Americans, most Mexican Americans, and tens of thousands of poor whites were disenfranchised, losing the vote for decades. In some states, grandfather clauses temporarily exempted white illiterates from literacy tests. The numbers of voters dropped drastically throughout the former Confederacy as a result. This can be seen via the feature "Turnout in Presidential and Midterm Elections" at the University of Texas' "Politics: Barriers to Voting". Alabama, which had established universal white suffrage in 1819 when it became a state, also substantially reduced voting by poor whites. Democrat-controlled legislatures passed Jim Crow laws to segregate public facilities and services, including transportation.


title: Southern United States

text: While African Americans, poor whites and civil rights groups started litigation against such provisions in the early 20th century, for decades Supreme Court decisions overturning such provisions were rapidly followed by new state laws with new devices to restrict voting. Most blacks in the former Confederacy and Oklahoma could not vote until 1965, after passage of the Voting Rights Act and Federal enforcement to ensure people could register. Despite increases in the eligible voting population with the inclusion of women, blacks, and those eighteen and over throughout this period, turnout in ex-Confederate states remained below the national average throughout the 20th century. Not until the late 1960s did all American citizens regain protected civil rights by passage of legislation following the leadership of the American Civil Rights Movement.


title: Southern United States

text: Historian William Chafe has explored the defensive techniques developed inside the African American community to avoid the worst features of Jim Crow as expressed in the legal system, unbalanced economic power, and intimidation and psychological pressure. Chafe says "protective socialization by blacks themselves" was created inside the community to accommodate white-imposed sanctions while subtly encouraging challenges to those sanctions. Known as "walking the tightrope," such efforts at bringing about change were only slightly effective before the 1920s, but did build the foundation that younger African Americans deployed in their aggressive, large-scale activism during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.


title: Southern United States

text: At the end of the 19th century, white Democrats in the South had created state constitutions that were hostile to industry and business development, with anti-industrial laws extensive from the time new constitutions were adopted in the 1890s. Banks were few and small; there was little access to credit. Traditional agriculture persisted across the region. Especially in Alabama and Florida, rural minorities held control in many state legislatures long after population had shifted to industrializing cities, and legislators resisted business and modernizing interests: Alabama refused to redistrict between 1901 and 1972, long after major population and economic shifts to cities. For decades Birmingham generated the majority of revenue for the state, for instance, but received little back in services or infrastructure.


title: Southern United States

text: In the late 19th century, Texas rapidly expanded its railroad network, creating a network of cities connected on a radial plan and linked to the port of Galveston. It was the first statein which urban and economic development proceeded independently of rivers, the primary transportation network of the past. A reflection of increasing industry were strikes and labor unrest: "in 1885 Texas ranked ninth among forty states in number of workers involved in strikes (4,000); for the six-year period it ranked fifteenth. Seventy-five of the one hundred strikes, chiefly interstate strikes of telegraphers and railway workers, occurred in the year 1886."


title: Southern United States

text: By 1890, Dallas became the largest city in Texas, and by 1900 it had a population of more than 42,000, which more than doubled to over 92,000 a decade later. Dallas was the harnessmaking capital of the world and a center of other manufacturing. As an example of its ambitions, in 1907 Dallas built the Praetorian Building, fifteen storeys tall and the first skyscraper west of the Mississippi, soon to be followed by other skyscrapers. Texas was transformed by a railroad network linking five important cities, among them Houston with its nearby port at Galveston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and El Paso. Each exceeded fifty thousand in population by 1920, with the major cities having three times that population.


title: Southern United States

text: Business interests were ignored by the Southern Democrat ruling class. Nonetheless, major new industries started developing in cities such as Atlanta, GA; Birmingham, AL; and Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston, Texas. Growth began occurring at a geometric rate. Birmingham became a major steel producer and mining town, with major population growth in the early decades of the 20th century.


title: Southern United States

text: The first major oil well in the South was drilled at Spindletop near Beaumont, Texas, on the morning of January 10, 1901. Other oil fields were later discovered nearby in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and under the Gulf of Mexico. The resulting "Oil Boom" permanently transformed the economy of the West South Central states and produced the richest economic expansion after the Civil War.


title: Southern United States

text: In the early 20th century, invasion of the boll weevil devastated cotton crops in the South, producing an additional catalyst to African Americans' decisions to leave the South. From 1910 to 1970, more than 6.5 million African Americans left the South in the Great Migration to Northern and Western cities, defecting from persistent lynching, violence, segregation, poor education, and inability to vote. Black migration transformed many Northern and Western cities, creating new cultures and music. Many African Americans, like other groups, became industrial workers; others started their own businesses within the communities. Southern whites also migrated to industrial cities like Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, and Los Angeles, where they took jobs in the booming new auto and defense industry.


title: Southern United States

text: Later, the Southern economy was dealt additional blows by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the economy suffered significant reversals and millions were left unemployed. Beginning in 1934 and lasting until 1939, an ecological disaster of severe wind and drought caused an exodus from Texas and Arkansas, the Oklahoma Panhandle region, and the surrounding plains, in which over 500,000 Americans were homeless, hungry and jobless. Thousands would leave the region to seek economic opportunities along the West Coast.


title: Southern United States

text: President Franklin D. Roosevelt noted the South as the "number one priority" in terms of need of assistance during the Great Depression. His administration created programs such as the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933 to provide rural electrification and stimulate development. Locked into low-productivity agriculture, the region's growth was slowed by limited industrial development, low levels of entrepreneurship, and the lack of capital investment.


title: Southern United States

text: World War II marked a time of dramatic change within the South from an economic standpoint, as new industries and military bases were developed by the Federal government, providing much needed capital and infrastructure in many regions. People from all parts of the US came to the South for military training and work in the region's many bases and new industries. During and after the war millions of hard-scrabble farmers, both white and black, left agriculture for other occupations and urban jobs.


title: Southern United States

text: The United States began mobilizing for war in a major way in the spring of 1940. The warm weather of the South proved ideal for building 60% of the Army's new training camps and nearly half the new airfields. In all, 40% of spending on new military installations went to the South. For example, in 1940 the small town of 1500 people in Starke, Florida, became the base of Camp Blanding. By March 1941, 20,000 men were constructing a permanent camp for 60,000 soldiers. Money flowed freely for the war effort, as over $4 billion went into military facilities in the South, and another $5 billion into defense plants. Major shipyards were built in Virginia, and Charleston, SC, and along the Gulf Coast.


title: Southern United States

text: Huge warplane plants were opened in Dallas-Fort Worth and Georgia. The most secret and expensive operation was at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where unlimited amounts of locally generated electricity were used to prepare uranium for the atom bomb. The number of production workers doubled during the war. Most training centers, factories and shipyards were closed in 1945, but not all, and the families that left hardscrabble farms remained to find jobs in the growing urban South. The region had finally reached the take off stage into industrial and commercial growth, although its income and wage levels lagged well behind the national average. Nevertheless, as George B. Tindall notes, the transformation was, "The demonstration of industrial potential, new habits of mind, and a recognition that industrialization demanded community services."


title: Southern United States

text: Per capita income jumped 140% from 1940 to 1945, compared to 100% elsewhere in the United States. Southern income rose from 59% to 65%. Dewey Grantham says the war, "brought an abrupt departure from the South's economic backwardness, poverty, and distinctive rural life, as the region moved perceptively closer to the mainstream of national economic and social life."


title: Southern United States

text: Farming shifted from cotton and tobacco, to include cattle, rice, soybeans, corn, and other foods. Industrial growth increased in the 1960s and greatly accelerated into the 1980s and 1990s. Several large urban areas in Texas, Georgia, and Florida grew to over four million people. Rapid expansion in industries such as autos, telecommunications, textiles, technology, banking, and aviation gave some states in the South an industrial strength to rival large states elsewhere in the country. By the 2000 census, the South (along with the West) was leading the nation in population growth. With this growth however, has come long commute times and air pollution problems in cities such as Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, and others that rely on sprawling development and highway networks.


title: Southern United States

text: In the late 20th century, the South changed dramatically. It saw a boom in its service economy, manufacturing base, high technology industries, and the financial sector. Texas in particular witnessed dramatic growth and population change with the dominance of the energy industry and tourism industries, such as the Alamo Mission in San Antonio. Tourism in Florida and along the Gulf Coast also grew steadily throughout the last decades of the 20th century.


title: Southern United States

text: Numerous new automobile production plants have opened in the region, or are soon to open, such as Mercedes-Benz in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Hyundai in Montgomery, Alabama; the BMW production plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina; Toyota plants in Georgetown, Kentucky, Blue Springs, Mississippi and San Antonio; the GM manufacturing plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee; a Honda factory in Lincoln, Alabama; the Nissan North American headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee and factories in Smyrna, Tennessee and Canton, Mississippi; a Kia factory in West Point, Georgia; and the Volkswagen Chattanooga Assembly Plant in Tennessee.


title: Southern United States

text: The two largest research parks in the country are located in the South: Research Triangle Park in North Carolina (the world's largest) and the Cummings Research Park in Huntsville, Alabama (the world's fourth largest).


title: Southern United States

text: In medicine, the Texas Medical Center in Houston has achieved international recognition in education, research, and patient care, especially in the fields of heart disease, cancer, and rehabilitation. In 1994 the Texas Medical Center was the largest medical center in the world including fourteen hospitals, two medical schools, four colleges of nursing, and six university systems. The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is consistently ranked the No. 1 cancer research and treatment center in the United States.


title: Southern United States

text: Many major banking corporations have headquarters in the region. Bank of America and Truist Financial are in Charlotte. Wachovia was headquartered there before its purchase by Wells Fargo. Regions Financial Corporation is in Birmingham, as is AmSouth Bancorporation, and previously BBVA Compass before its acquisition by PNC Financial Services. Atlanta is the district headquarters of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.


title: Southern United States

text: Even with certain southern states and areas doing well economically, many southern states and areas still have high poverty rates when compared to the U.S. nationally. In the U.S. top ten poorest big cities of 2010, the South was represented in the rankings by two cities: Miami, Florida and Memphis, Tennessee. In 2011, nine out of ten poorest states were in the South region.


title: Southern United States

text: Many corporations are headquartered in Atlanta and its surrounding area, such as The Coca-Cola Company, Delta Air Lines, and The Home Depot, and also to many cable television networks, such as the Turner Broadcasting System (CNN, TBS, TNT, Turner South, Cartoon Network) and The Weather Channel. In 2019, Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Southern states included: Texas with 50, Virginia with 21, Florida with 18, Georgia with 17, North Carolina with 11, and Tennessee with 10. This economic expansion has enabled parts of the South to report some of the lowest unemployment rates in the United States. In 2022, Texas led the nation with the most Fortune 500 company headquarters with 53.


title: Southern United States

text: Southern public schools in the past have ranked in the lower half of some national surveys. When allowance for race is considered, a 2007 US Government list of test scores often shows white fourth and eighth graders performing better than average for reading and math; while black fourth and eighth graders also performed better than average. This comparison does not hold across the board. Mississippi often scores lower than national averages, no matter how statistics are compared. Newer data from 2009 suggests that secondary school education in the South is on par nationally, with 72% of high schoolers graduating compared to 73% nationwide.


title: Southern United States

text: The Southern United States is home to some of the nation's largest and most prominent public and private institutions of higher education. Notable public colleges and universities in the South include:


title: Southern United States

text: Several Southern states (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia) were among the British colonies that sent delegates to sign the Declaration of Independence and then fought against the government (Great Britain), along with the Middle and New England colonies, during the Revolutionary War. The basis for much of Southern culture derives from these states being among the original Thirteen Colonies, and from much of the population of the colonial South having ancestral links to colonists who emigrated west. Southern manners and customs reflect the relationship with England that was held by the early population.


title: Southern United States

text: Overall, the South has had lower housing values, lower household incomes, and lower cost of living than the rest of the United States. These factors, combined with the fact that Southerners have continued to maintain strong loyalty to family ties, has led some sociologists to label white Southerners an ethnic or quasi-ethnic group, though this interpretation has been subject to criticism on the grounds that proponents of the view do not satisfactorily indicate how Southerners meet the criteria of ethnicity.


title: Southern United States

text: The predominant culture of the South has its origins with the settlement of the region by large groups of people from parts of southern England such as Sussex, Kent, the West Country, and East Anglia who moved to the Tidewater and the eastern parts of the Deep South in the 17th and early 18th centuries, Northern English, Scots lowlanders and Ulster-Scots (later called the Scotch-Irish) who settled in Appalachia and the Upland South in the mid to late 18th century, and the many African slaves who were part of the Southern economy. African American descendants of the slaves brought into the South compose the United States' second-largest racial minority, accounting for 12.1% of the total population according to the 2000 census. Despite Jim Crow era outflow to the North, the majority of the black population remains concentrated in Southern states, and has heavily contributed to the cultural blend of religion, food, art, and music (see spiritual, blues, jazz, R&B, soul music, country music, zydeco, bluegrass and rock and roll) that characterize Southern culture today.


title: Southern United States

text: In previous censuses, the largest ancestry group identified by Southerners was English or mostly English, with 19,618,370 self-reporting "English" as an ancestry on the 1980 census, followed by 12,709,872 listing "Irish" and 11,054,127 "Afro-American". Almost a third of all Americans who claim English ancestry can be found in the American South, and over a quarter of all Southerners claim English descent as well.


title: Southern United States

text: The South has had a majority of its population adhering to evangelical Protestantism ever since the Second Great Awakening, although the upper classes often stayed Anglican/Episcopalian or Presbyterian. The First Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening from about 1742 to about 1850 generated large numbers of Methodists and Baptists, which remain the two main Christian confessions in the South. By 1900, the Southern Baptist Convention had become the largest Protestant denomination in the whole United States with its membership concentrated in rural areas of the South. Baptists are the most common religious group, followed by Methodists, Pentecostals and other denominations. Roman Catholics historically were concentrated in Maryland, Louisiana, and Hispanic areas such as South Texas and South Florida and along the Gulf Coast. The great majority of black Southerners are either Baptist or Methodist. Statistics show that Southern states have the highest religious attendance figures of any region in the United States, constituting the so-called Bible Belt. Pentecostalism has been strong across the South since the late 19th century.


title: Southern United States

text: Apart from its climate, the living experience in the South increasingly resembles the rest of the nation. The arrival of millions of Northerners and Westerners, mainly since the late 20th century, has reshaped the culture of major metropolitan areas and coastal areas. Observers conclude that collective identity and Southern distinctiveness are declining, particularly when defined against "an earlier South that was somehow more authentic, real, more unified and distinct".


title: Southern United States

text: While Hispanics have long been a major factor in Texas, millions more have arrived in other Southern states during the 1990s and early 2000s bringing values not rooted in local traditions. Historian Raymond Mohl emphasizes the role of NAFTA in lowering trade barriers and facilitating large-scale population movements. He adds other factors such as ongoing economic crisis in Mexico, new more liberal immigration policies in the United States, labor recruitment and smuggling, that have produced a major flow of Mexican and Hispanic migration to the southeast. That region's low-wage, low-skill economy readily hired cheap, reliable, nonunion labor, without asking applicants too many questions about legal status. Richard J. Gonzales argues that the rise of La Raza (Mexican American community) in terms of numbers and influence in politics, education, and language and cultural rights will grow rapidly in Texas by 2030 when demographers predict Hispanics will outnumber Anglos in Texas. However thus far their political participation and the Latino vote have been low, so the potential political impact is much higher than the actual one thus far.


title: Southern United States

text: Scholars have suggested that in the Deep South collective identity and Southern distinctiveness are thus declining, particularly when defined against "an earlier South that was somehow more authentic, real, more unified and distinct". On the other hand, Southerners have moved west in large numbers, especially to California and to the Midwest. Thus, journalist Michael Hirsh proposed that aspects of Southern culture have spread throughout a greater portion of the rest of the United States in a process termed "Southernization".


title: Southern United States

text: American football is heavily considered the most popular team sport in most areas of the Southern United States.


title: Southern United States

text: The region is home to numerous decorated and historic college football programs, particularly in the Southeastern Conference (known as the "SEC"), Atlantic Coast Conference (known as the "ACC"), and the Big 12 Conference. The SEC, consisting almost entirely of teams based in Southern states, is widely considered to be the strongest league in contemporary college football and includes the Alabama Crimson Tide, the program with the most national championships in the sport's modern history. The sport is also highly competitive and has a spectator following at the high school level, particularly in rural areas, where high school football games often serve as prominent community gatherings.


title: Southern United States

text: The first established professional American football team based in the South were the Washington Redskins, now called the Washington Commanders. They still retain a large following in most of Virginia, and parts of Maryland. Later on, the National Football League (NFL) began to expand many teams in the Southern US during the 1960s, with franchises like the Atlanta Falcons, New Orleans Saints, Houston Oilers, Miami Dolphins, and most prominently the Dallas Cowboys, who overtook Washington as the region's most popular team and eventually became widely considered the most popular team in the United States. In later decades, NFL expansion into Southern states continued, with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during the 1970s, along with the Carolina Panthers, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Baltimore Ravens during the 1990s. The Houston Oilers were eventually replaced by the Houston Texans, after the Oilers relocated to Nashville to become the Tennessee Titans.


title: Southern United States

text: Baseball has been played in the Southern United States dating back to the mid-19th century. It was traditionally more popular than American football until the 1980s, and still accounts for the largest annual attendance amongst sports played in the South. The first mention of a baseball team in Houston was on April 11, 1861. During the late 19th century and early 20th century games were common, especially once the professional leagues such as the Texas League, the Dixie League, and the Southern League were organized.


title: Southern United States

text: The short-lived Louisville Colonels were a part of the early National League and American Association, but ceased to exist in 1899. The first Southern Major League Baseball team after the Colonels appeared in 1962, when the Houston Colt .45s (known today as the Houston Astros) were enfranchised. Later, the Atlanta Braves came in 1966, followed by the Texas Rangers in 1972, and finally the Miami Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays in the 1990s.


title: Southern United States

text: College baseball appears to be more well attended in the South than elsewhere, as teams like Florida State, Arkansas, LSU, Virginia, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Florida and Texas are commonly at the top of the NCAA's attendance. The South generally produces very successful collegiate baseball teams with Virginia, Vanderbilt, LSU, South Carolina, Florida and Coastal Carolina winning recent College World Series Titles.


title: Southern United States

text: The Southern states are commonly associated with stock car racing and its most prominent competition level NASCAR, which is headquartered in Charlotte and Daytona Beach. The sport was developed in the South during the early 20th century, with stock car racing's historic mecca being Daytona Beach, where cars initially raced on the wide, flat beachfront, before the construction of Daytona International Speedway. Though the sport has attained a following throughout the United States, a majority of NASCAR races continue to take place at Southern tracks.


title: Southern United States

text: Basketball is very popular throughout the Southern United States as both a recreational and spectator sport, particularly in the states of Kentucky and North Carolina. Both states are home to several prominent college basketball programs, including the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, Duke Blue Devils and North Carolina Tar Heels.


title: Southern United States

text: NBA teams based in the South include the San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets, Oklahoma City Thunder, Dallas Mavericks, Washington Wizards, Charlotte Hornets, Atlanta Hawks, Orlando Magic, Memphis Grizzlies, New Orleans Pelicans, and Miami Heat. The Spurs and Heat in particular have become prominent within the NBA, with eight championships won by the two between 1999 and 2013.


title: Southern United States

text: Golf is a popular recreational sport in most areas of the South, with the region's warm climate allowing it to host many professional tournaments and numerous destination golf resorts, particularly in the state of Florida. The region is home to The Masters, one of the four major championships in professional golf. The Masters is played at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, and has become one of the professional game's most important tournaments. Hilton Head Island, in South Carolina, is also home to a prominent American golf tournament and has several high-quality courses.


title: Southern United States

text: In recent decades association football, known in the South as in the rest of the United States as "soccer", has become a popular sport at youth and collegiate levels throughout the region. The game has been historically widespread at the college level in the Atlantic coast states of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas; which contain many of the nation's most successful college soccer programs.


title: Southern United States

text: The establishment of Major League Soccer has led to professional soccer clubs in the Southern cities including FC Dallas, Houston Dynamo, D.C. United, Orlando City, Inter Miami CF, Nashville SC, Atlanta United, Austin FC and Charlotte FC. The current United States second division soccer league, the USL Championship, was initially geographically based in the coastal Southeast around clubs in Charleston, Richmond, Charlotte, Wilmington, Raleigh, Virginia Beach, and Atlanta.


title: Southern United States

text: The Southern region is home to numerous professional sports franchises in the "Big Four" leagues (NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB), with many championships collectively among them.


title: Southern United States

text: Nine Southern states have obesity rates exceeding 30% of the population, the highest in the country. Those states include: Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, South Carolina, Kentucky and Texas. Rates for hypertension and diabetes for these states are also the highest in the nation. A study reported that six Southern states have the worst incidence of sleep disturbances in the nation, attributing the disturbances to high rates of obesity and smoking. The South has a higher percentage of obese people and diabetics when compared to national regional averages. The region also has the largest number of people dying from stroke complications and the highest rates of cognitive decline. Life expectancy is lower and death rates are higher, when compared to national averages of other regions in the United States. This disparity reflects substantial divergence between the South and other regions since the middle of the 20th century.


title: Southern United States

text: The East South Central Census Division of the United States (made up of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama) had the highest rate of inpatient hospital stays in 2012. The other divisions, West South Central (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana) and South Atlantic (West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida) ranked seventh and fifth. The South had a significantly higher rate of hospital discharges in 2005 than other regions of the United States, but the rate had declined to be closer to the overall national rate by 2011.


title: Southern United States

text: For cancer causes, the South, particularly an axis from West Virginia through Texas, leads the nation in adult obesity, adult smoking, low exercise, low fruit consumption, low vegetable consumption, all known cancer risk factors, which matches a similar high risk axis in "All Cancers Combined, Death Rates by State, 2011" from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


title: Southern United States

text: The South is home to some of the nation's largest academic health systems, including the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Duke University Health, University of Florida Health, UNC Medical Center, University of Miami Health, UT Health Science Center at Houston, Emory Healthcare and University of South Florida Health among others.


title: Southern United States

text: In the first decades after Reconstruction (1880s–1890s), white Democrats regained power in the state legislatures, and began to make voter registration more complicated, to reduce black voting. With a combination of intimidation, fraud and violence by paramilitary groups, they suppressed black voting and turned Republicans out of office. From 1890 to 1908, ten of eleven states ratified new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised most black voters and many poor white voters. This disenfranchisement persisted for six decades into the 20th century, depriving blacks and poor whites of all political representation. Because they could not vote, they could not sit on juries. They had no one to represent their interests, resulting in state legislatures consistently underfunding programs and services, such as schools, for blacks and poor whites. Scholars have characterized pockets of the Southern United States as being "authoritarian enclaves" from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Act.


title: Southern United States

text: With the collapse of the Republican Party in nearly all parts of the South, the region became known as the "Solid South", and the Democratic Party after 1900 moved to a system of primaries to select their candidates. Victory in a primary was tantamount to election. From the late 1870s to the 1960s, only rarely was a state or national Southern politician a Republican, outside from Southern Republican strongholds within the Appalachian mountain districts. Southern Republicans during this time period would continue to control parts of the Appalachian Mountain areas and compete for power in the former Border States. Apart from a few states (such as the Byrd Machine in Virginia, the Crump Machine in Memphis), and a few other local organizations, the Democratic Party itself was very lightly organized. It managed primaries but party officials had little other role. To be successful a politician built his own network of friends, neighbors and allies. Reelection was the norm, and the result from 1910 to the late 20th century was that Southern Democrats in Congress had accumulated seniority, and automatically took the chairmanships of all committees. By the 1940s the Supreme Court began to find disenfranchisement measures like the "grandfather clause" and the white primary unconstitutional. Southern legislatures quickly passed other measures to keep blacks disenfranchised, even after suffrage was extended more widely to poor whites. Because white Democrats controlled all the Southern seats in the U.S. Congress, they had outsize power and could sidetrack or filibuster efforts to pass legislation they didn't agree with.


title: Southern United States

text: Increasing support for civil rights legislation by the national Democratic Party beginning in 1948 caused segregationist Southern Democrats to nominate Strom Thurmond on a third-party "Dixiecrat" ticket in 1948. These Dixiecrats returned to the party by 1950, but Southern Democrats held off Republican inroads in the suburbs by arguing that only they could defend the region from the onslaught of northern liberals and the civil rights movement. In response to the "Brown v. Board of Education" ruling of 1954, 101 Southern congressmen (19 senators, 82 House members of which 99 were Southern Democrats and 2 were Republicans) in 1956 denounced the Brown decisions as a "clear abuse of judicial power [that] climaxes a trend in the federal judiciary undertaking to legislate in derogation of the authority of Congress and to encroach upon the reserved rights of the states and the people." The manifesto lauded, "...those states which have declared the intention to resist enforced integration by any lawful means". It was signed by all Southern senators except Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, and Tennessee senators Albert Gore Sr. and Estes Kefauver. Virginia closed schools in Warren County, Prince Edward County, Charlottesville, and Norfolk rather than integrate, but no other state followed suit. Democratic governors Orval Faubus of Arkansas, Ross Barnett of Mississippi, John Connally of Texas, Lester Maddox of Georgia, and, especially, George Wallace of Alabama resisted integration and appealed to a rural and blue-collar electorate.


title: Southern United States

text: The northern Democrats' support of civil rights issues culminated when Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended legal segregation and provided federal enforcement of voting rights for blacks. In the presidential election of 1964, Barry Goldwater's only electoral victories outside his home state of Arizona were in the states of the Deep South where few blacks could vote before the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Pockets of resistance to integration in public places broke out in violence during the 1960s by the shadowy Ku Klux Klan, which caused a backlash among moderates. Major resistance to school busing extended into the 1970s.


title: Southern United States

text: National Republicans such as Richard Nixon began to develop their Southern strategy to attract conservative white Southerners, especially the middle class and suburban voters, in addition to migrants from the North and traditional GOP pockets in Appalachia. The transition to a Republican stronghold in the South took decades. First, the states started voting Republican in presidential elections, except for native southerners Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Then the states began electing Republican senators and finally governors. Georgia was the last state to do so, with Sonny Perdue taking the governorship in 2002. In addition to its middle class and business base, Republicans cultivated the religious right and attracted strong majorities from the evangelical or Fundamentalist vote, mostly Southern Baptists, which had not been a distinct political force prior to 1980.


title: Southern United States

text: Southern liberals were an essential part of the New Deal coalition – without them Roosevelt lacked majorities in Congress. Typical leaders were Lyndon B. Johnson in Texas, Jim Folsom and John Sparkman in Alabama, Claude Pepper in Florida, Earl Long and Hale Boggs in Louisiana, and Estes Kefauver in Tennessee. They promoted subsidies for small farmers, and supported the nascent labor union movement. An essential condition for this north–south coalition was for northern liberals to ignore the problem of racism throughout the South and elsewhere in the country. After 1945, however, northern liberals led especially by young Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota increasingly made civil rights a central issue. They convinced Truman to join them in 1948. The conservative Southern Democrats the Dixiecrats took control of the state parties in half the region and ran Strom Thurmond for president against Truman. Thurmond carried only the Deep South, but that threat was enough to guarantee the national Democratic Party in 1952 and 1956 would not make civil rights a major issue. In 1956, 101 of the 128 southern congressmen and senators signed the Southern Manifesto denouncing forced desegregation. The labor movement in the South was divided, and lost its political influence. Southern liberals were in a quandary – most of them kept quiet or moderated their liberalism, others switched sides, and the rest continued on the liberal path. One by one, the last group was defeated; historian Numan V. Bartley states, "Indeed, the very word 'liberal' gradually disappeared from the southern political lexicon, except as a term of opprobrium."


title: Southern United States

text: The South produced nine of the country's first twelve Presidents. After Zachary Taylor won the presidential election of 1848, no Southern politician was elected president until Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Andrew Johnson (of Tennessee) who was vice president in 1865, became president after the death of Abraham Lincoln. Out of the last eleven U.S. presidents, six have Southern region ties: Lyndon B. Johnson (of Texas; 1963–69), Jimmy Carter (of Georgia; 1977–81), George H. W. Bush (of Texas; 1989–93), Bill Clinton (of Arkansas; 1993–2001), George W. Bush (of Texas; 2001–2009), and Joe Biden (of Delaware; 2021–present). Johnson was a native of Texas, while Carter is from Georgia, and Clinton from Arkansas. While George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush began their political careers in Texas, they were both born in New England and have their ancestral roots in that region. Similarly, while Joe Biden was born in Pennsylvania, he grew up largely in Delaware (classified as a Southern state by the U.S. Census Bureau) and spent his entire political career there.


title: Southern United States

text: The South has produced various nationally known politicians and political movements. In 1948, a group of Democratic congressmen, led by Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, split from the Democrats in reaction to an anti-segregation speech given by Minneapolis mayor and future senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. They founded the States Rights Democratic or Dixiecrat Party. During that year's presidential election, the party ran Thurmond as its candidate and he carried four Deep South states.


title: Southern United States

text: In the 1968 Presidential election, Alabama Governor George C. Wallace ran for president on the American Independent Party ticket. Wallace ran a "law and order" campaign similar to that of Republican candidate, Richard Nixon. Nixon's Southern Strategy of gaining electoral votes downplayed race issues and focused on culturally conservative values, such as family issues, patriotism, and cultural issues that appealed to Southern Baptists.


title: Southern United States

text: In the 1994 mid-term elections, another Southern politician, Newt Gingrich, led the Republican Revolution, ushering in twelve years of GOP control of the House. Gingrich became Speaker of the United States House of Representatives in 1995 and served until his resignation in 1999. Tom DeLay was the most powerful Republican leader in Congress until he was indicted under criminal charges in 2005 and was forced to step aside by Republican rules. Apart from Bob Dole from Kansas (1985–96), the recent Republican Senate Leaders have been Southerners: Howard Baker (1981–1985) of Tennessee, Trent Lott (1996–2003) of Mississippi, Bill Frist (2003–2006) of Tennessee, and Mitch McConnell (2007–present) of Kentucky.


title: Southern United States

text: The Republicans candidates for president have won the South in elections since 1972, except for 1976. The region is not, however, entirely monolithic, and every successful Democratic candidate since 1976 has claimed at least three Southern states. Barack Obama won Florida, Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina, and Virginia in 2008 but did not repeat his victory in North Carolina during his 2012 reelection campaign. Joe Biden also performed well for a modern Democrat in the South, winning Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and Georgia, in the 2020 United States presidential election.


title: Southern United States

text: Native Americans had lived in what is the American South for nearly 12,000 years. They were defeated by settlers in a series of wars ending in the War of 1812 and the Seminole Wars, and most were removed west to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma and Kansas), but large numbers of Native Americans managed to stay behind by blending into the surrounding society. This was especially true of the wives of European American merchants and miners.


title: Southern United States

text: The South witnessed two major events in the lives of 20th century African Americans: the Great Migration and the American Civil Rights Movement. The Great Migration began during World War I, hitting its high point during World War II. During this migration, Black people left the South to find work in Northern factories and other sectors of the economy.


title: Southern United States

text: The migration also empowered the growing Civil Rights Movement. While the movement existed in all parts of the United States, its focus was against disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow laws in the South. Most of the major events in the movement occurred in the South, including the Montgomery bus boycott, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the March on Selma, Alabama, and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In addition, some of the most important writings to come out of the movement were written in the South, such as King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail". Most of the civil rights landmarks can be found around the South. The Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument in Birmingham includes the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute which details Birmingham's role as the center of the Civil Rights Movement. The 16th Street Baptist Church served as a rallying point for coordinating and carrying out the Birmingham campaign as well as the adjacent Kelly Ingram Park that served as ground zero for the infamous children's protest that eventually led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has been rededicated as a place of "Revolution and Reconciliation" and is now the setting of moving sculptures related to the battle for Civil Rights in the city, both are center pieces of the Birmingham Civil Rights District. The Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park in Atlanta includes a museum that chronicles the American Civil Rights Movement as well as Martin Luther King Jr.'s boyhood home on Auburn Avenue. Additionally, Ebenezer Baptist Church is located in the Sweet Auburn district as is the King Center, location of Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King's gravesites.


title: Southern United States

text: During the 1950s and 1960s, the racial integration of all-white collegiate sports teams was high on the regional agenda. Involved in it were issues of racial equality, racism, and the alumni's demand for the top players who it needed to win high-profile games. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) would take the lead. First they started to schedule integrated teams from the North. The wake-up call came in 1966, when Don Haskins's Texas Western College team with five black starters, upset the all-white University of Kentucky team to win the NCAA national basketball championship. That happened at a time when there were no black varsity basketball teams in either the Southeastern Conference or the Southwest Conference. Finally ACC schools, typically under pressure from boosters and civil rights groups, integrated their sports teams. With an alumni base that dominated local and state politics, society and business, the ACC flagship schools were successful in their endeavor as historian Pamela Grundy argues, they had learned how to win:


title: Southern United States

text: The decisive action ending segregation came when Congress in bipartisan fashion overcame Southern filibusters to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A complex interaction of factors came together unexpectedly in the period 1954–1965 to make the momentous changes possible. The Supreme Court had taken the first initiative in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) making segregation of public schools unconstitutional. Enforcement was rapid in the North and border states, but was deliberately stopped in the South by the movement called Massive Resistance, sponsored by rural segregationists who largely controlled the state legislatures. Southern liberals, who counseled moderation, were shouted down by both sides and have limited impact. Much more significant was the Civil Rights Movement, especially the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) headed by Martin Luther King Jr. It largely displaced the old, much more moderate NAACP in taking leadership roles. King organized massive demonstrations, that seized massive media attention in an era when network television news was an innovative and universally watched phenomenon. SCLC, student activists and smaller local organizations staged demonstrations across the South. National attention focused on Birmingham, Alabama, where protesters deliberately provoked Bull Connor and his police forces by using young teenagers as demonstrators – and Connor arrested 900 on one day alone. The next day Connor unleashed billy clubs, police dogs, and high-pressure water hoses to disperse and punish the young demonstrators with a brutality that horrified the nation. It was very bad for business, and for the image of a modernizing progressive urban South. President John F. Kennedy, who had been calling for moderation, threatened to use federal troops to restore order in Birmingham. The result in Birmingham was compromise by which the new mayor opened the library, golf courses, and other city facilities to both races, against the backdrop of church bombings and assassinations.


title: Southern United States

text: Confrontations continued to escalate. In summer 1963, there were 800 demonstrations in 200 southern cities and towns, with over 100,000 participants, and 15,000 arrests. In Alabama in June 1963, Governor George Wallace escalated the crisis by defying court orders to admit the first two black students to the University of Alabama. Kennedy responded by sending Congress a comprehensive civil rights bill, and ordered Attorney General Robert Kennedy to file federal lawsuits against segregated schools, and to deny funds for discriminatory programs. Doctor King launched a massive march on Washington in August 1963, bringing out 200,000 demonstrators in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the largest political assembly in the nation's history. The Kennedy administration now gave full-fledged support to the civil rights movement, but powerful southern congressmen blocked any legislation. After Kennedy was assassinated President Lyndon Johnson called for immediate passage of Kennedy civil rights legislation as a memorial to the martyred president. Johnson formed a coalition with Northern Republicans that led to passage in the House, and with the help of Republican Senate leader Everett Dirksen with passage in the Senate early in 1964. For the first time in history, the southern filibuster was broken and The Senate finally passed its version on June 19 by vote of 73 to 27. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most powerful affirmation of equal rights ever made by Congress. It guaranteed access to public accommodations such as restaurants and places of amusement, authorized the Justice Department to bring suits does desegregate facilities in schools, gave new powers to the Civil Rights Commission; and allowed federal funds to be cut off in cases of discrimination. Furthermore, racial, religious and gender discrimination was outlawed for businesses with 25 or more employees, as well as apartment houses. The South resisted until the last moment, but as soon as the new law was signed by President Johnson on July 2, 1964, it was widely accepted across the nation. There was only a scattering of diehard opposition, typified by restaurant owner Lester Maddox in Georgia, who became governor, but the great majority of restaurants and hotels in Georgia followed the new law as the business community realized that peaceful integration was the only way forward.


title: Southern United States

text: Since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, black people have gone on to hold many offices within the Southern states. Black people have been elected or appointed as mayors or police chiefs in the cities of Atlanta, Baltimore, Birmingham, Charlotte, Columbia, Dover, Houston, Jackson, Jacksonville, Memphis, Montgomery, Nashville, New Orleans, Raleigh, Richmond, and Washington. They have also gone on to serve in both the U.S. Congress and state legislatures of Southern states.


title: Southern United States

text: The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s ended Jim Crow laws across the South and other areas of the United States. In recent decades, a second migration appears to be underway, this time with African Americans from the North moving to the South in record numbers. While race relations are still a contentious issue in the South and most of the U.S., the region surpasses the rest of the country in many areas of integration and racial equality. According to 2003 report by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Virginia Beach, Charlotte, Nashville-Davidson, and Jacksonville were the five most integrated of the nation's fifty largest cities, with Memphis at number six. Southern states tend to have a low disparity in incarceration rates between blacks and whites relative to the rest of the country.


title: Southern United States

text: Some Southerners use the Confederate battle flag to identify themselves with the South, states' rights and Southern tradition.


title: Southern United States

text: Such groups as the League of the South have a high regard for the secession movement of 1860, citing a desire to protect and defend Southern heritage. Numerous political battles have erupted over flying the Confederate flag over state capitols, and the naming of public buildings or highways after Confederate leaders, the prominence of certain statues and monuments, and the everyday display of Confederate insignia.


title: Southern United States

text: The South was heavily rural up until the 1940s. Since the mid-20th century, the population has increasingly grown in urban and metropolitan areas. The following tables show the twenty largest cities, counties, metropolitan and combined statistical areas in the South. Houston is the largest city in the Southern United States.


title: Southern United States

text: <nowiki>*</nowiki> Asterisk indicates part of the metropolitan area is outside the states classified as Southern by the U.S. Census Bureau.


title: Southern United States

text: Listed below are states that are defined by the Census Bureau as the Southern United States. Washington, D.C. is located in the Southern United States region as defined by the Census Bureau, but serves as the capital city of the United States, and is not a state.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage (né Schreibvogel; born March 5, 1963), known professionally as Joe Exotic and nicknamed "The Tiger King," is an American media personality, businessman, and convicted felon who operated the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park (also known as the G.W. Zoo) in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, from 1998 to 2018.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Born in Kansas, Exotic and his family moved to Texas, where he enrolled at Pilot Point High School. After graduation, Exotic briefly served as the chief of police in Eastvale. He then opened a pet store with his brother, but after his brother's death in 1997, Exotic sold the store and founded the G.W. Zoo. During his tenure as director there, he also held magic shows and cub-petting events at venues across the U.S., hosted an online talk show, and worked with producer Rick Kirkham to create a reality television series about himself, but this latter effort ended when most footage was destroyed in a fire in 2015.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Exotic left the G.W. Zoo in June 2018 and was arrested three months later on suspicion of hiring two men to murder Big Cat Rescue founder Carole Baskin, with whom he had a complicated rivalry. In 2019, Exotic was convicted and sentenced to 22 years in prison on 17 federal charges of animal abuse and two counts of attempted murder for hire for the plot to kill Baskin. In 2021, he worked with attorney John Michael Phillips to file a motion for a new trial, and on July 15, 2021, a U.S. appeals court ruled that the convictions for the two murder attempts were wrongly treated as separate. The trial court reduced his sentence by 1 year, resentencing him to 21 years in late January 2022.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Exotic has an eccentric personality and has been subject to substantial criticism, especially for the controversies surrounding his feud with Baskin and the treatment of animals at the G.W. Zoo. Exotic has been featured in several documentaries, including the Netflix series "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness" (2020–present), a documentary about Exotic's career as a zookeeper and his feud with Baskin. The success of the first season of "Tiger King" amid the worldwide COVID-19 lockdowns led to Exotic receiving attention on social media and inspiring several internet memes. Exotic also appears in two Louis Theroux documentaries, "America's Most Dangerous Pets" (2011) and "" (2021).


title: Joe Exotic

text: Joe Exotic was born Joseph Allen Schreibvogel in Garden City, Kansas, on March 5, 1963, to parents Francis and Shirley Schreibvogel. The Schreibvogels had four other children: Tamara, Pamela, Yarri, and Garold "G.W." Wayne.


title: Joe Exotic

text: The Schreibvogel family moved to Texas, where Exotic was enrolled at Pilot Point High School. After graduating from high school, he joined the Eastvale police department and was promoted to chief of the small department in 1982. He was outed to his parents as being homosexual by his estranged older brother Yarri, and in response their father made Exotic shake his hand and promise not to come to his funeral.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Exotic has said that he was badly injured in 1985 when he crashed his police cruiser into a bridge, although his claims about the wreck have changed over time: In 2019, he told "Texas Monthly" that the incident was a spontaneous suicide attempt, but he told "The Dallas Morning News" in 1997 that he was forced off the road by an unidentified vehicle during a drug investigation. A 2019 investigation by "New York", which included interviews of family members and local residents who knew him at the time, failed to find anyone who could recall such an event taking place, although he presented a photograph showing a wrecked car as evidence.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Soon after the auto accident, Exotic moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, and managed a pet store. A friend who worked at a drive-through safari park brought baby lions to his neighbor's home and let Exotic handle them. Exotic credits these experiences with inspiring him to work with animals.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Exotic returned to Texas and worked at various jobs before opening a pet shop with his brother "G.W.", who shared Exotic's love of animals, in Arlington, Texas, in 1986. In 1997, after closing the first pet shop and opening a new one nearby, Exotic came into conflict with Arlington officials over repeated code violations for decorations and signs: He had been hanging gay pride symbols such as a United States flag with rainbow stripes in the shop windows, and he accused city inspectors of homophobia and of targeting the business because of his sexual orientation. In 1997 his brother was killed in an auto accident, and Exotic sold the pet shop and purchased a Oklahoma farm with his parents. Two years after his brother's death, the farm opened as Garold Wayne Exotic Animal Memorial Park in dedication to his brother. Two of Wayne's pets were the zoo's first inhabitants.


title: Joe Exotic

text: In 2000, Exotic acquired his first two tigers, which had been abandoned. He said that the first animal rescue in his career as a zookeeper was an eleven-foot alligator with a severe eye infection. According to Exotic, he spoke by phone to Steve Irwin of Australia Zoo, whose vets provided advice on appropriate antibiotics for alligators and on treating an injured kangaroo. In 2006, after Irwin was killed by a stingray, Exotic dedicated a large indoor alligator complex inside the G.W. Zoo in his memory, naming it the Steve Irwin Memorial. Some of the alligators in the complex came from Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Exotic worked as the owner and operator of the G.W. Zoo for over 20 years. He left the zoo on June 18, 2018, three months before his arrest. In 2021, Exotic stated that his whole outlook on animals in captivity has changed while he's been in jail, and he now believes that "no animal belongs in a cage". He also said that he never would have had a zoo if he had known what life inside a cage was like 20 years ago.


title: Joe Exotic

text: In 2002, seeking a way to earn money to feed his growing number of animals, Exotic partnered with a traveling magician to provide and handle tigers during stage illusions. The magician and Exotic eventually parted company, but Exotic had realized that using his big cats in magic shows was a good way to earn money. He began staging traveling magic shows himself and adopted "Joe Exotic" as his stage name. He soon found that attendees at his magic shows would pay to pet and have their picture taken with tiger cubs, and that these activities were often more lucrative than the magic show itself. His magic shows gradually evolved into cub-petting events, and he began breeding his cats to ensure that cubs were consistently available. This allowed him to increase the number of adult cats at his park and generate more money to feed them. To benefit his stage persona, Exotic began behaving more flamboyantly, wearing flashy clothing and jewelry and adopting his trademark bleached mullet hairstyle.


title: Joe Exotic

text: During his career as a zoo owner, Exotic was also an aspiring country music singer. Under the pretense of obtaining music for a planned reality television series, he commissioned country songs from other artists, with his creative contributions reportedly being limited to suggesting song topics and singing some backing vocals. He produced music videos for the songs and posted them on his YouTube channel, depicting himself as the main performer and taking full credit for the music, allegedly without having notified the actual artists. One of Exotic's best-known songs is "I Saw a Tiger", which was featured in "Tiger King" and has been covered by numerous bands and artists.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Exotic's two studio albums, "I Saw a Tiger" (2014) and "Star Struck" (2015), are featured in the "Tiger King" episode "Not Your Average Joe."


title: Joe Exotic

text: Exotic first appeared in Louis Theroux's 2011 documentary "America's Most Dangerous Pets". Five years later, he appeared in J.D. Thompson's documentary "The Life Exotic: Or the Incredible True Story of Joe Schreibvogel." Theroux stated that Exotic initially struck him as likeable and friendly, and that, owing to Exotic's emotional volatility, Theroux was inclined to be protective of him.


title: Joe Exotic

text: The Netflix documentary series "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness" is centered on Exotic and his rivalry with Carole Baskin. The first season of the series was released in March 2020, coinciding with the worldwide COVID-19 lockdown following the COVID-19 outbreak being classified as a pandemic by the World Health Organization. A week after the release of "Tiger King," both the series and Exotic himself went viral, with numerous internet memes about both Exotic and Baskin being made. In a Netflix interview in prison, Exotic stated that he was thankful for the fame and that he was "done with the Baskin saga".


title: Joe Exotic

text: In July 2020, Discovery released the documentary "Surviving Joe Exotic," which is focused on the animals at the G.W. Zoo. The documentary features interviews with Exotic and former G.W. Zoo employees, with the Exotic interview scenes having been filmed four months before his arrest.


title: Joe Exotic

text: On April 5, 2021, British documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux released a new documentary on Exotic, titled "", on BBC Two in the United Kingdom. The documentary contained unseen footage of Exotic from a previous documentary by Theroux as well as new interviews of other people associated with Exotic, including Exotic's legal team and Howard and Carole Baskin, his estranged niece and brother, as well as a tour around the abandoned and extensively vandalized former G.W. Zoo property.


title: Joe Exotic

text: From 2014 to 2018, Exotic occasionally worked as a professional wrestling commentator and hosted two wrestling programs at the G.W. Zoo. Exotic's involvement with wrestling began when he met Texas businessman and pro wrestling promoter Robert Langdon at the G.W. Zoo's "Monkey Ball" charity event in 2010. They bonded over their ownership of exotic animals, and Exotic began to provide colour commentary at NWA Texoma events, which would be streamed on the JoeExoticTV YouTube channel. Langdon walked Exotic down the aisle for his marriage to current husband Dillon Passage.


title: Joe Exotic

text: In May 2021, Exotic launched a cryptocurrency to raise revenue for his defense fund as well as charity incentives personal to him. In June 2021, Exotic launched an NFT auction as part of a collaboration with a cryptocurrency organization. Exotic also intends to send real-life collectibles, including one of his revolvers.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Exotic ran as an independent candidate in the 2016 election for President of the United States, attaining ballot access in Colorado and receiving 962 votes (including recorded write-ins) nationwide. During his campaign, Exotic uploaded several video messages to then-Republican nominee Donald Trump, in which he called out several politicians he said were crooked, Baskin and other animal rights people who he alleged were scamming the public, and various laws he disagreed with.


title: Joe Exotic

text: While running for president, Exotic was featured in an episode of "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver", which covered Exotic's write-in campaign as part of the show's coverage of the 2016 United States presidential election. Oliver complimented the production quality of Exotic's music videos, and came up with a campaign slogan for Exotic: Make America Exotic Again, which later inspired the title of the "Tiger King" episode covering Exotic's political runs. Before the episode aired, Oliver was warned about the controversies at Exotic's zoo and his rants toward Baskin.


title: Joe Exotic

text: After losing in the 2016 election, Exotic ran in the 2018 Libertarian Party primary election for Governor of Oklahoma. He received 664 votes in the primary, finishing last among the three Libertarian candidates. During his primary campaign, he was officially censured by the Oklahoma Libertarian Party. In 2019, following his arrest, the state convention voted unanimously to revoke his party membership.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Exotic has been strongly criticized for his treatment of animals that he owns, including by Baskin, which eventually led to an investigation by the USDA and convictions for animal abuse.


title: Joe Exotic

text: In February 1999, animal welfare investigators discovered a large number of neglected emus in Red Oak, Texas, and Exotic volunteered to capture the animals and take them to his animal park. However, Exotic, local volunteers, and Red Oak police were quickly overwhelmed by the task of corralling the large and fast-running birds, several of which died. Exotic and another man resorted to killing emus with shotguns and were accused of animal cruelty by police. However, since the emus were considered livestock, they could lawfully be killed humanely in Texas, and a grand jury declined to indict Exotic. Most surviving birds ultimately wound up at Texas ranches.


title: Joe Exotic

text: In 2000, to feed his growing zoo of big cats, he took in horses that were donated to him. He would shoot the horses and feed them whole to the tigers, lions, and other big cats.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Due to the amount of exotic animals at his zoo, Exotic found feeding them all to be expensive. To help offset the cost, Exotic fed them expired meat from Walmart. Employees at the zoo also ate this expired Walmart meat, and also used the expired meat to make pizzas.


title: Joe Exotic

text: In 2006, the G.W. Zoo was cited multiple times by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for violations of Animal Welfare Act standards. In 2020, Exotic was convicted of falsifying wildlife records in violation of the Endangered Species Act.


title: Joe Exotic

text: The feud between Exotic and Carole Baskin began in 2009 when Baskin, who sought to end commercial cub petting in the United States, targeted Exotic's lucrative traveling shows. While Exotic and the Wynnewood park had been subject to protests and investigations by animal rights organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, these efforts had been sporadic and poorly organized and did not seriously hamper his business. Baskin's Big Cat Rescue organization—which had a very popular Facebook page and many informal volunteers recruited on social media—proved to be a more daunting antagonist. Big Cat Rescue volunteers began to track Exotic's movements and email bomb managers of shopping malls that hosted his shows, prompting many of them to cancel, jeopardizing his revenue stream.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Exotic saw Baskin's actions as hypocritical because she also operated an animal sanctuary that charged admission, albeit for nonprofit purposes. Exotic responded to Baskin's social media efforts by setting up his own TV studio and YouTube channel at the G.W. Zoo, hosting a nightly talk show that increasingly focused on vitriolic attacks against Big Cat Rescue and Baskin personally. He covertly visited Big Cat Rescue in September 2010 and chartered a helicopter to survey the property. He obtained a copy of Baskin's diary stolen from her computer by a former employee and posted excerpts online.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Baskin's second husband, Don Lewis, disappeared in 1997 and was declared legally dead in 2002. Evidence of foul play is lacking and Baskin was never named as a suspect; however, Lewis's daughter says that Baskin killed Lewis and fed his body to her tigers, and Exotic used his YouTube show to promote this theory and others relating to Lewis's disappearance, offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to Baskin's arrest.


title: Joe Exotic

text: In 2011, Exotic copied the Big Cat Rescue name and various identifying aspects of the sanctuary's branding in his marketing, rebranding his traveling show as "Big Cat Rescue Entertainment" with a Florida phone number. Baskin said that she was quickly inundated with emails and phone calls from distraught supporters who assumed that she was operating the traveling show. Baskin sued Exotic for trademark infringement and was eventually awarded a $1 million settlement from him although she was unable to collect most of it. Two years later, Exotic filed for bankruptcy.


title: Joe Exotic

text: In 2015, Exotic's mother Shirley was sued by Big Cat Rescue over assets that belonged to Exotic or the G.W. Zoo being transferred into and out of her name. In May 2020, the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma ruled that Exotic fraudulently transferred ownership of the park to his mother to avoid paying debts resulting from the earlier settlement, awarding ownership to Baskin and giving Exotic's former business partner Jeff Lowe until October 1 to vacate the premises. Baskin decided to sell the park with deed restrictions prohibiting the keeping of exotic animals. Lowe relocated the animals to Thackerville, Oklahoma, intending to open a new park there, but the U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit citing Lowe's history of poor animal care; the new park never opened and federal authorities seized all remaining cats in May 2021.


title: Joe Exotic

text: On March 26, 2015, a fire broke out at the G.W. Zoo, destroying the Steve Irwin Memorial and Exotic's TV studio, where he shot his YouTube videos and stored footage for a planned reality series. All but one of Michael Jackson's alligators were killed. The blaze was thought to have been started by an arsonist, possibly a vindictive employee, but no one was ever arrested. Exotic blamed animal rights activists for the incident, while "Tiger King" speculated that the perpetrator may have been Exotic himself or Rick Kirkham, the reality TV producer who worked with him.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Kirkham asserts that Exotic and zoo employees sought to destroy incriminating footage he had stored in the TV studio. Kirkham says that Exotic killed some of his own tigers, and that he had video of Exotic killing animals, but it was lost in the fire. During an interview, Kirkham remarked, "There was footage in there of Exotic actually killing animals for fun. In the course of my year, he walked up to a tiger he didn't like and just shot it in the head."


title: Joe Exotic

text: With the exception of his brother Garold, Exotic did not have a good relationship with his family; in particular his estranged brother Yarri has been very critical of him, believing that he manipulated the Schreibvogel family to take the money from Garold's death for himself. Exotic's niece Chealsi Putman, who worked at the G.W. Zoo periodically from 1999 to 2017, also criticized him. In April 2021, Putman was interviewed by Louis Theroux for "" and claimed that the tigers Exotic shot were not sick.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Several of Exotic's former employees at the G.W. Zoo have called out his actions in interviews after the release of "Tiger King". He has most frequently been criticised by Rick Kirkham, who claimed that things were "a hell of a lot worse" than what's depicted in "Tiger King;" "[Watching Tiger King], you kinda had a little bit of a heart for the guy, but you really didn't realize or get to see how evil he really could be, not only to animals, but to people." In the "Tiger King" aftershow, Kirkham stated that Exotic was terrified of lions and tigers, and remarked "It's idiotic to think how Exotic's become famous as the Tiger King when he's so terrified of big cats."


title: Joe Exotic

text: As a result of an investigation by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, and the U.S. Marshals Service, he was arrested and arraigned on charges of attempting to hire two hitmen to kill Baskin.


title: Joe Exotic

text: In April 2019, A federal jury found him guilty on two counts of hiring someone to murder Baskin in Florida, eight counts of violating the Lacey Act by falsifying wildlife records, and nine counts of violating the Endangered Species Act by killing five tigers and selling tigers across state lines. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison on January 22, 2020, and was incarcerated at Federal Medical Center, Fort Worth (FMC Fort Worth). In March 2020, Exotic filed a lawsuit against those he blamed for his arrest and conviction, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the lead prosecutor, a federal agent, and former business partner Jeff Lowe; he sought $94 million, but he dropped the lawsuit five months later.


title: Joe Exotic

text: In April 2020, Exotic was a topic of conversation during a White House COVID-19 press conference. A few days later, Donald Trump Jr. joked about the prospect of Exotic getting a pardon.


title: Joe Exotic

text: In May 2020, a private investigator, attorneys representing Exotic, and a group of volunteers calling themselves "Team Tiger" delivered a 257-page document to the U.S. Department of Justice disputing elements of his conviction and requesting a pardon from President Donald Trump. The following month, Trump described Exotic and his supporters as "strange" but did not say whether he would consider pardoning him. On January 19, 2021, the day before the inauguration of Joe Biden, Team Tiger chartered a limousine in Fort Worth to prepare for Exotic's anticipated last-minute pardon and release. However, he ultimately was not pardoned and remained incarcerated at FMC Fort Worth. It was reported in March 2021 that Exotic intended to seek a pardon from Joe Biden. Later that month, Exotic hired John Michael Phillips and Amy Hanna as his attorneys. They planned to file a motion for a new trial within a few months. In July 2021, a three-judge panel for the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Exotic should serve a shorter sentence, saying the convictions for hiring two men to kill Baskin should have been treated as one by the trial court.


title: Joe Exotic

text: While incarcerated, Exotic wrote his autobiography, "Tiger King: The Official Tell-All Memoir", which was released on November 9, 2021. In prison, Exotic has been allowed to use a computer for 30 minutes at a time, so he worked on his book every day.


title: Joe Exotic

text: After the success of the first season of "Tiger King", Exotic began to receive a large amount of fan mail. Cardi B attempted to start a GoFundMe to help get Exotic out of prison. Exotic also inspired several Internet memes, most of which were based on his quotes in "Tiger King." He also inspired the ongoing "Free Joe Exotic" campaign, started by fans who believed he was wrongly convicted. On March 31, 2020, Donald Trump Jr. posted two Exotic memes to Instagram, the first featuring a face merge of his father and Exotic, and the second featuring Joe Biden's head photoshopped over an image of Exotic with a tiger.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Exotic was transferred from FMC Fort Worth to Federal Medical Center, Butner in North Carolina in November 2021.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Exotic is an ordained minister in the state of Oklahoma and is able to officiate marriages. He obtained his ministry license from the Universal Life Church.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Exotic is gay and has referred to numerous partners as his husband despite them not being legally married.


title: Joe Exotic

text: His first known male partner was Brian Rhyne, who died of complications from HIV in 2001. The following year, he started a relationship with Jeffrey Charles 'JC' Hartpence, an event manager who aided him with his traveling animal show. In mid 2003, John Finlay was hired as an employee of the G.W. Zoo and within a month began a relationship with Exotic. By this point, the relationship between Exotic and Hartpence had deteriorated owing to drug and alcohol addiction. It finally ended after Exotic threatened to kill Hartpence and feed his remains to the zoo's largest tiger. Hartpence later woke Exotic up by putting a gun to his head, an action that led to Hartpence's arrest by the local authorities. Hartpence was later convicted of child molestation and first-degree murder.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Travis Maldonado arrived at the zoo in December 2013 and, like Finlay, rapidly began a relationship with Exotic. Exotic, Maldonado, and Finlay were unofficially married to each other less than a month later in a three-partner wedding ceremony. Exotic and Finlay eventually fell out, and following an incident in the zoo's car park Finlay was arrested and charged with assault and battery. In 2015, Exotic legally wed Maldonado and his legal name became Joseph Maldonado. However, neither Finlay nor Travis Maldonado identified as homosexual and both had affairs with women: Finlay impregnated the zoo's receptionist (which was one of the reasons leading to his departure), and Travis Maldonado was regularly having sex with multiple women on the zoo grounds.


title: Joe Exotic

text: On October 6, 2017, Travis Maldonado fatally shot himself at the zoo in front of Joshua Dial, who was Exotic's campaign manager at the time. In his memory, Exotic set up a charity called the Travis Maldonado Foundation, which claimed it would provide "no-cost resources for those struggling with meth addiction and gun-safety education." At Travis' memorial service at the G.W. Zoo, Exotic stated that God put him on Earth to make him smile and stated his balls "were like golden nuggets."


title: Joe Exotic

text: Exotic married Dillon Passage on December 11 of the same year; one of the witnesses was Travis Maldonado's mother. Upon his marriage to Passage, Exotic's legal surname became Maldonado-Passage. During their relationship, Exotic prevented Passage from making friends at the G.W. Zoo, and also prevented him from spending time with his mother and cousin.


title: Joe Exotic

text: In March 2021, Exotic and Passage's relationship experienced a strain after Passage did not answer one of Exotic's calls, with many people suspecting they had broken up. On March 26, Passage revealed on Instagram that he and Exotic are seeking a divorce, but on good terms and that he'll continue to have Exotic in his life. Passage announced in July 2021 that he was now in a relationship with a man closer to his age named John. Exotic initially wished the couple well, but stated that he would have liked to have been told by Passage himself rather than TMZ. He later referred to Passage as "a dumbass", and blocked him on Instagram and Twitter following Passage releasing a video exposing Exotic's abusive and controlling behavior during their relationship, where he stated he felt like "another animal in a cage."


title: Joe Exotic

text: That same month, Exotic announced a contest called "The Bachelor King," where men over 18 years of age can fill out an application online to possibly be the next husband in Exotic's life.


title: Joe Exotic

text: Exotic claims that after wrecking his police cruiser in 1985, he was confined to a hospital for over a month, and then spent several years in rehabilitation. He also stated to have had four heart attacks during his career as a zookeeper.


title: Joe Exotic

text: In April 2020, there were multiple cases of COVID-19 at Exotic's prison. For safety precautions, Exotic was moved from Grady County Jail in Oklahoma to Federal Medical Center and began a 14-day quarantine. "Tiger King" fans speculated that Exotic had COVID-19, but Dillon Passage confirmed to fans that he did not.


title: Joe Exotic

text: In January 2021, he was reportedly suffering from an unverified medical condition. In March 2021, it was reported that he was suffering from a blood-immune disorder and was being denied treatment.


title: Joe Exotic

text: On May 14, 2021, it was reported that Exotic had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and approved testing to verify what stage it is in. In August 2021, he said that his prostate cancer might have spread to his pelvis. In November, he said that he had an aggressive form of cancer, and has since been moved to Federal Medical Center, Butner in North Carolina for treatment.


title: Lamar Odom

text: Lamar Joseph Odom (born November 6, 1979) is an American former professional basketball player. As a member of the Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association (NBA), he won championships in 2009 and 2010 and was named the NBA Sixth Man of the Year in 2011.


title: Lamar Odom

text: In high school, Odom received national player of the year honors from "Parade" in 1997. He played college basketball for the University of Rhode Island, earning all-conference honors during his only season in the Atlantic 10 Conference before turning professional. The Los Angeles Clippers selected Odom with the fourth overall pick in the first round of the 1999 NBA draft. He was named to the NBA All-Rookie Team in the following year; it was during his four seasons with the Clippers, however, that he was twice suspended for violating the league's anti-drug policy. As a restricted free agent, he then signed with the Miami Heat, where he played the 2003–04 season before being traded to the Lakers. Odom spent seven seasons with the Lakers, who traded him to the Dallas Mavericks in 2011. After the move, his career declined. He was traded back to the Clippers in 2012 and played briefly in Spain in 2014.


title: Lamar Odom

text: Odom played on the United States national team, winning a bronze medal in the Olympics in 2004 and a gold medal in the FIBA World Championship (later known as the World Cup) in 2010.


title: Lamar Odom

text: Odom was married to Khloé Kardashian from 2009 to 2016. During their marriage, Odom made several appearances on the reality television show "Keeping Up with the Kardashians". He and Kardashian also had their own reality series, "Khloé & Lamar". In October 2015, Odom was hospitalized in a comatose state after being discovered unconscious in a Nevada brothel. He later sought treatment for drug and alcohol addiction.


title: Lamar Odom

text: Odom was born in South Jamaica, Queens, New York City, to Joe Odom and Cathy Mercer. His father was a heroin addict. His mother died of colon cancer when he was only 12 years old. On her deathbed, she reportedly told him: "Be nice to everybody." Odom was afterwards raised by his maternal grandmother, Mildred Mercer.


title: Lamar Odom

text: In his first three years of high school, Odom played for Christ the King Regional High School in Middle Village, Queens. He left the school at the start of his senior year due to poor grades, transferring first to Redemption Christian Academy in Troy, New York, and then to the now-defunct St. Thomas Aquinas High School in New Britain, Connecticut, where he was coached by Jerry DeGregorio. As a senior, Odom was recognized nationally as the "Parade" Player of the Year in 1997. Among other distinctions, he earned "USA Today" All-USA First Team honors and was named to the "Parade" All-American First Team for the second consecutive year. While still in high school, Odom played on the same AAU team as future NBA teammates Elton Brand and Ron Artest (later known as Metta World Peace); he also played at the Adidas ABCD Camp with future Lakers teammate Kobe Bryant. Adidas executive Sonny Vaccaro commented at the time that Odom possessed a "$2 million smile".


title: Lamar Odom

text: Though he considered entering the NBA directly from high school and consulted Kobe Bryant as a player who had made that jump, Odom ultimately decided that he was not ready and committed to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas instead. However, a "Sports Illustrated" story questioning the validity of his ACT score and an arrest for soliciting prostitution provided the school cause enough to revoke his scholarship, and for this reason, he never played for the Runnin' Rebels. To the university's further embarrassment, an investigation by the NCAA would later reveal that Odom had received $5,600 in illicit payments from one of its boosters, resulting in the firing of Coach Bill Bayno and UNLV being placed on probation for four years.


title: Lamar Odom

text: Odom transferred to the University of Rhode Island, with the cost of his room and board being covered by funds his father received from the G.I. Bill. Since he was admitted as a non-matriculating student, Odom was forced to sit out the 1997–98 season. After two semesters and a summer session, however, Odom earned his eligibility to play intramural basketball. His career at Rhode Island had been in some jeopardy during his first semester after he once vanished before finals; that is until coach Jim Harrick prevailed upon three of his four instructors to let him make up his extant work. The coach also had Odom work alongside DeGregorio, who had become a Rams assistant and ended up being the player's closest friend in college. Odom also drew inspiration from the example of his maternal grandmother, a nurse who had raised five children and returned to school to earn her degree in 1980 at the age of 56.


title: Lamar Odom

text: Odom played one season (1998–99) for Rhode Island, during which he averaged 17.6 points per game and led the Rams to the conference championship. He earned First Team All-Conference honors and was named the Atlantic 10 Rookie of the Year. He was named the most valuable player of the Atlantic 10 tournament after his three-point shot at the buzzer against Temple gave the Rams their first A-10 title.


title: Lamar Odom

text: Odom declared his eligibility for the 1999 NBA draft after his freshman year at Rhode Island. He then tried to return to college, thinking he was not ready for the NBA; but having already signed with an agent, he was no longer eligible to withdraw from the draft. Odom was selected by the Los Angeles Clippers with the fourth overall pick. In his first season with the Clippers, Odom averaged 16.6 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 4.2 assists per game. He put up 30 points and tore down 12 rebounds in his NBA debut. He was named to the 2000 NBA All-Rookie First Team.


title: Lamar Odom

text: In the 2000–01 season, Odom increased his scoring average to 17.2 points a game as he started in 74 games. The Clippers again failed to make the playoffs, however, as the young team could not improve their positioning in the Western Conference. In March 2001, Odom was suspended for five games for violating the terms of the NBA's anti-drug policy. In the following season, he was suspended in November for yet another infraction of the anti-drug policy, his second offense in eight months. He admitted to using marijuana after the suspension. Odom only played 29 games during the season, and his production slipped.


title: Lamar Odom

text: He would only play in 49 games during the 2002–03 season, and would become a restricted free agent the following summer. The Miami Heat offered a deal that the Clippers declined to match after already matching another offer the Heat made to Elton Brand.


title: Lamar Odom

text: The Heat had won only 25 games the previous season but had drafted young talent such as Dwyane Wade and Caron Butler. Odom was brought on to play as the team's starting power forward. Along with a budding Wade and the veteran Eddie Jones, Odom shared the scoring load, scoring 17.1 points to go with a career-high 9.7 rebounds per game. Despite an inauspicious start to the season where they lost seven consecutive games, the Heat ended up playing much better and even competing for a seed in the playoffs. On March 6, Odom posted a triple-double, scoring 30 points with 19 rebounds and 11 assists in a home win over the Sacramento Kings. The Heat would go on to clinch the fourth seed in the playoffs and face off against the New Orleans Hornets in the first round. Each team won at home, but the Heat would win a seventh deciding game to advance to the second round and face a top-seeded Indiana Pacers team. The Pacers won the first two games in Indiana, but the Heat responded with two consecutive home wins, including a game 4 victory that was led by Odom's 22 points. The Pacers' breadth of experience proved too much for the younger Heat, however, as they claimed games 5 and 6 to win the series. All in all, Odom had a solid season compared to his previous one with the Clippers.


title: Lamar Odom

text: After the season, Odom was traded in a package with Caron Butler and Brian Grant to the Los Angeles Lakers for All-Star Shaquille O'Neal.


title: Lamar Odom

text: In his first year with the Los Angeles Lakers, Odom incurred a left shoulder injury that forced him to miss the end of the 2004–05 season. Despite Odom averaging 15.2 points and a career-high 10.2 rebounds, the Lakers finished out of the playoffs for only the 5th time in franchise history. Following the 2004–05 season, they re-hired former coach Phil Jackson.


title: Lamar Odom

text: In the first half of the 2005–06 season, Odom showed signs of inconsistency. However, as Los Angeles progressed towards the end of the season, his performance steadily improved. Along the way, he posted consecutive triple-doubles for the first time as a Laker in games against the Golden State Warriors and the Portland Trail Blazers. The Lakers were eliminated in 7 games in their first round playoffs matchup against the Phoenix Suns, having blown a 3–1 series lead. Odom averaged 14.8 points and 9.2 rebounds during the season and increased his scoring (19.1) and rebounds (11) in seven playoff contests.


title: Lamar Odom

text: Battling injuries, Odom was limited to 56 games in 2006–07, but finished with an average of 15.9 points and 9.8 rebounds per game. In a rematch of the previous year's series, the Lakers were again defeated by the Suns in the first round of the 2007 NBA Playoffs.


title: Lamar Odom

text: After young center Andrew Bynum had gone down with a knee injury and Pau Gasol was acquired amid the 2007–08 season, Odom stepped up his production, as he posted averages of 15.3 points, 12 rebounds, and 4 assists across 36 games. He would finish that season averaging 14.2 points, 10.6 rebounds, and 3.5 assists per contest. In the 2008 NBA Finals, however, his numbers would decline to 13.5 points, 9 rebounds, and 3 assists per game, with the Lakers falling to the Boston Celtics.


title: Lamar Odom

text: In 2008–09, Odom arrived to training camp out of shape. Jackson later disclosed his plan to move Odom to the bench as their sixth man, backing up the Lakers' frontcourt consisting of Gasol, Bynum, and Trevor Ariza. A free agent after the season, Odom initially balked at the prospect of playing as a reserve for the first time in his career. But he came around to the assignment soon enough, having resolved to sacrifice his own numbers to make his teammates happy and in hopes of securing his first NBA championship. In January, after Bynum got injured in a game against the Memphis Grizzlies, Odom returned to the starting lineup. Over the month of February, he averaged 16.5 points and 13.4 rebounds while playing 36 minutes a night. This February run included a standout performance at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. The 15 points Odom scored in the third quarter helped the Lakers turn a 12-point deficit to a 10-point victory, ending Cleveland's 23-game home winning streak in the process. Odom finished the game with 28 points, 17 rebounds, and 2 assists.


title: Lamar Odom

text: When Bynum returned to the hardwood for a home game against the Denver Nuggets, on the 9th of April, Odom adjusted back into his sixth-man role. Odom finished the season with 11.3 points, 8.2 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 1.0 steals, and 1.3 blocks with 29.7 minutes per contest. He won his first NBA championship when the Lakers defeated the Orlando Magic in the 2009 NBA Finals.


title: Lamar Odom

text: Over the 2009 offseason, Odom was heavily courted by his former franchise, the Miami Heat. Despite pleas from Heat guard Dwyane Wade and Heat executive Pat Riley, Kobe Bryant was optimistic that Odom would return to Los Angeles, reasoning that he would prefer to team up with newly acquired asset and fellow New Yorker Ron Artest. On July 31, 2009, after a month of tedious negotiations, the Lakers announced that they had made a four-year, $33 million deal with Odom. The investment paid off as Odom would play a crucial role for the Lakers on their way to another NBA Championship, with the team winning over the Boston Celtics in the 2010 NBA Finals.


title: Lamar Odom

text: Odom continued his strong play for the Lakers with another solid season in 2010–11, as he posted career-highs in both three-point shooting percentage (.382) and overall field goal percentage (.530). He started 35 games in Bynum's absence during the season and averaged 16.3 points and 10.2 rebounds in those games. In 47 games off the bench, Odom averaged 13.5 points, 7.5 rebounds in 28.4 minutes. Meeting the requirement to come in as a reserve more games than he started, Odom was awarded the NBA Sixth Man of the Year Award, becoming the first player in Lakers history to do so. Bryant called it Odom's most "consistent season".


title: Lamar Odom

text: During the offseason, Odom considered taking a break from basketball after a close cousin of his was murdered and he himself was a passenger in a SUV involved in an accident that tragically killed a teenage cyclist. The car accident had occurred the day after Odom attended his cousin's funeral.


title: Lamar Odom

text: On December 11, 2011, Odom was traded to the Dallas Mavericks, the defending NBA champions, for a first-round draft pick and an $8.9 million trade exception after NBA Commissioner David Stern vetoed a proposed three-team trade that would have sent Odom and Houston Rockets teammates Kevin Martin, Luis Scola, and Goran Dragić to the New Orleans Hornets; Chris Paul to the Lakers; and Pau Gasol to the Houston Rockets. Odom felt "disrespected" after he learned of the Hornets trade publicly, and he requested a trade from the Lakers to another contending team. The Lakers were also concerned that Odom's contract was pricey since he was not needed to initiate the triangle offense with Mike Brown replacing Phil Jackson as Lakers coach.


title: Lamar Odom

text: In January 2012, Sports Illustrated reported that "Odom [had] yet to find his niche in Dallas. His struggles [made] him a frequent target of [Mavericks coach Rick] Carlisle, who [harped] on Odom's need to understand the coverages, be more alert, communicate and get in better shape ... Team sources say Odom ... appeared stressed by what they believe [was] the mental burden of an overwhelming offseason." On March 2, 2012, Odom was assigned to the Texas Legends of the NBA D-League. He had missed the prior three games due to personal reasons. His stint with the Legends was canceled on March 3, 2012, and he returned to the Mavs' active roster. On March 24, Odom did not play in a 104–87 loss to the San Antonio Spurs; this was the first time he could remember not playing due to a coach's decision.


title: Lamar Odom

text: On April 9, 2012, it was announced that Odom had parted ways with the Mavericks. Instead of releasing him, the team listed Odom as inactive for the remainder of the season. The move allowed the Mavericks to trade him at the end of the season. In a statement to ESPN, Odom said, "I'm sorry that things didn't work out better for both of us, but I wish the Mavs' organization, my teammates and Dallas fans nothing but continued success in the defense of their championship." Mavericks owner Mark Cuban admitted that a clash between the two during halftime in a game against the Memphis Grizzlies on April 7 was the last straw. Odom reportedly responded angrily when Cuban questioned his commitment, asking if he was "in or out". Odom averaged only 6.6 points in 20.5 minutes along with career lows in shooting percentage (35.2), rebounds (4.2) and assists (1.7).


title: Lamar Odom

text: On June 29, 2012, Odom was traded back to the Los Angeles Clippers as part of a four-team deal. The deal sent Odom to the Clippers, the rights to Tadija Dragićević and cash considerations to the Dallas Mavericks, Mo Williams and the draft rights to Shan Foster to the Utah Jazz, and the draft rights to Furkan Aldemir to the Houston Rockets. He played all 82 games of the season for the third time in his career, but only started two of them. Out of shape for half the season, he averaged career lows of 4.0 ppg and 1.7 apg in 19.7 mpg during the season. He also averaged 5.9 rebounds, but shot just 39.9 percent. The Clippers finished 56–26 and won their first-ever Pacific Division title.


title: Lamar Odom

text: In July 2013, Odom became a free agent, but did not land an NBA contract despite some interest from the Clippers in his return. The Lakers also contemplated re-signing him, but both teams committed to other players instead.