New York Family Leaves Fast-Paced Lifestyle for the Laid-Back South

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GUNSHOTS, sirens, traffic jams and the rude, crude remarks of impatient passersby used to be commonplace for Evan and Marjul Francis of Queens, N.Y., before they decided, like thousands of other transplanted Northerners, to exchange the pressure-cooker lifestyle of urban America for the slow churning pace of the South.

A region remembered for the bitterness of slavery and Jim Crow is now seen by an increasing number of Black Americans as a hopeful haven away from the big-city scene of drugs, crime and poverty.

"We both agreed that the American Dream was basically over for us in New York," says 27-year-old Evan Francis, a Port Washington, N.Y, native, who decided to move his family South after losing his job as a data technician a week after his honeymoon. "My wife and I had decided that eventually we were going to move to Atlanta, Ga., regardless, but the layoff speeded up the process."

The …