I'm all for salvaging the various Southern accents, but the rural New England accent was beautiful too and it's already long gone. All that's left in New England now is urban Boston.
BTW, why is it that Southern Blacks are never stigmatized for Southern accents or dialects? I suppose silly liberals think their accents come from West Africa.
There are those who have tried to claim that various southern speech patterns and even religious practices are actually West African. That's not to diminish the contributions of Africa to southern cuisine, music and arts; there are many. But, the rhythmic exhortation and response of an AME Zion Church service is much more rooted in Scotland than Africa, and the gospel music finds more inspiration than is generally acknowledged from there, too.
If you want to actually hear West Africa, going back more than three centuries on this continent, get down to the Carolina and Georgia coast, to the very few remaining Barrier Islands that are unmolested by the invading NY/NJ horde.
The Gullah. Clarence Thomas is Gullah.