Probably Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Though I wonder if, in a modern context, inland vs. coastal would be a more meaningful divide of the south.
Only in a political context. Looking beyond the red/blue divide, there are still plenty of glaring differences between the Deep South (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia) and the Upper South (Tenn, Arkansas, Kentucky, West Virginia) in demographics, ancestry, language, and culture.
If we're going to mention just three states, I'm not sure that Georgia should count, given the growth of Atlanta. Alabama and Mississippi alone stick out above everything else as the most Southern.
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