Southerners We Lost in 2025

Photo: Timothy D. Easley/Associated Press

It was often said that the former home economics teacher handled the Kentucky state house with the same steadiness she showed in the classroom. But it took real grit and political acumen to be elected as the state’s first (and still only) female governor in 1983. She served as chairwoman of the 1984 Democratic National Convention and, against the odds, charmed Toyota into building its first stand-alone U.S. factory in Kentucky, revving the state’s economy.

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Photo: Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

“Play it, Steve!” So went the exuberant shout-out on Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man” to Stax Records’ resident guitar whiz (a moment reprised when Cropper also played on The Blues Brothers cover). As a member of Booker T. & the M.G.s, Cropper laid down the hottest licks of 1960s Southern soul. Those talented fingers stayed busy elsewhere, too, cowriting “In the Midnight Hour” with Wilson Pickett and producing Otis Redding’s posthumous “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” 

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Photo: Ed Betz/Associated Press

Though Dent grew up caddying at the famed Augusta National Golf Club, he developed his game—especially his feared long drives—at a local municipal course known as “the Patch.” His career had staying power: After joining the PGA tour in 1970 as one of few Black pros, he competed for sixteen years before becoming even more of a force on the senior tour. Fittingly, Augusta renamed the road leading into “the Patch” as Jim Dent Way in 2021.

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Photo: SULLY SULLIVAN

That Dupree was never too busy to enliven Garden & Gun with her wit and wisdom on topics ranging from cooking grits in the microwave to the merits of the corn scraper was typical of her generosity. Even as hosting duties on PBS’s New Southern Cooking with Nathalie Dupree and fifteen best-selling cookbooks made her a culinary icon, she mentored a legion of young chefs and provided inspiration in a million other selfless—and delicious—ways.

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Photo: Harold Filan/Associated Press

Flack’s career breakthrough was as unique as the blend of classical and soul influences she absorbed in Virginia churches and as a piano prodigy at Howard University. Her 1969 debut album went largely unnoticed until Clint Eastwood used her sublime recording of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in his 1971 film Play Misty for Me. Subsequent hits “Killing Me Softly” and “Feel Like Makin’ Love” anchored a career that lasted until Flack retired from performing in 2022.

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Photo: Associated Press

Never has a heavyweight boxing champion’s personality seemed so split. In the ring, the native of Marshall, Texas, was a scowling knockout artist who vowed to kill Muhammad Ali in their famous “Rumble in the Jungle” showdown. On the path to his ultimate retirement in 1997, though, “Big George” emerged as a warmly smiling pitchman for his own line of tabletop grills and a frequent TV talk show guest with quips as quick as his fists.

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Photo: Fred Hermansky/NBC/Getty Images

Born in Florence, Alabama, Godchaux was fortuitously positioned for the blooming of nearby Muscle Shoals into a major recording center. There, she sang backup for the likes of Cher and Ben E. King. Relocating to San Francisco in 1970, she and keyboardist husband Keith became full members of the Grateful Dead for almost a decade of studio recordings and freewheeling concerts, during which she would sometimes front the legendary jam band at center stage.

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Photo: John T. Edge

Pableaux Johnson.

Born Paul Michael Johnson, the New Orleans food writer and photographer forged a new given name in college to mark the influence of Latin and Cajun cultures on his life. Known for welcoming Big Easy newcomers with communal dinners of red beans and rice, he also loved to document second line parades. The day after he suffered a fatal heart attack at one, friends and admirers celebrated his life with another second line, many wearing sweatshirts bearing his smiling image.

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Photo: Kulsveen Family

Kulsveen’s 2019 induction into the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame was the culmination of an unlikely backstory. Born in Norway, he married Martha Willet in 1972, not long before the whiskey glut era shuttered the Willett family’s Kentucky distillery. Against the odds, the couple nursed the operation back to health in the 1980s, producing high-quality bourbons that became coveted in the subsequent bourbon boom. More importantly, they kept Willett Distillery a family business that’s now being steered by the next generation.

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Photo: Ralph Dominguez/MediaPunch/IPX

Ladd was not one of those character actors whose names you can’t quite place. Whether appearing in a soap opera or a prestige film, the Meridian, Mississippi–raised star shone bright, earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of sassy Southern waitress Flo in 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Additional nominations came for 1990’s Wild at Heart and 1991’s Rambling Rose, productions she shared with daughter Laura Dern.

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Photo: Chris Pizzello/Associated Press

Miami-born Moore’s gospel-tinged tenor, interwoven with the baritone of Sam & Dave partner Dave Prater, drove “Soul Man,” “I Thank You,” and “Hold On, I’m Comin’” to the top of the charts in the 1960s. (The only thing more propulsive was the duo’s energy in live shows.) Their influence remained long after a 1970 breakup. “Over on E Street, we are heartbroken to hear of the death of Sam Moore, one of America’s greatest soul voices,” said superfan Bruce Springsteen.

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Photo: William Hereford

As the molasses-voiced host of ESPN’s popular The Walker’s Cay Chronicles for fifteen years, Pallot became almost synonymous with the rise of saltwater angling as a lifestyle. His guiding expertise went much farther afield, though, encompassing hunts for deer, turkey, and hog that took him across the country and planet, always paired with a steadfast advocacy for conservation. Pallot’s was a self-made life lived largely in the outdoors, and for the outdoors. 

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Photo: David Goldman/Associated Press

Person was an eighteen-year-old freshman at Morehouse College in 1961 when he stepped aboard one of the first two buses of Freedom Riders, integrated groups of civil rights activists who traveled the South to contest the unconstitutional segregation of public spaces. The beatings bravely endured by the youngest Freedom Rider at the hands of white mobs in South Carolina and Alabama horrified the nation, pressuring the Kennedy administration to enforce desegregation of bus terminals six months later.