The Southern United States, commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South, is a region of the United States of America. The South does not exactly match the geographic south, but is predominantly located in the southeastern corner; Arizona and New Mexico, which are geographically in the southern part of the country, are rarely considered part of the Southern United States, while West Virginia, which separated from Virginia in 1863, commonly is. Some scholars have proposed definitions of the South that do not coincide neatly with state boundaries. While the states of Delaware and Maryland, as well as the District of Columbia permitted slavery prior to the start of the Civil War, they remained with the Union. Since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, they became