JACKSON, Miss. — It was not that long ago that Victoria Fortenberry figured she would mark her 18th birthday by getting on a bus and getting out of Mississippi. But here she was, blue-haired, tattooed and 19 years old, singing at a party for a new line of craft beer to a crowd that included her girlfriend.

Ms. Fortenberry came here to attend a Christian college and found a place where she could be unashamedly Southern and openly gay in a way not possible in her conservative suburban hometown, or even in the Jackson of a decade ago. And so: “At some point,” she said, “I decided I won’t just leave.”

Jackson may not register nationally as an outpost of bohemianism or urbane liberalism. But its city government, which is majority black and Democratic, refuses to fly the Confederate-themed state flag at municipal buildings, and this month voted unanimously to oppose a new state law that creates special legal protections for opponents of same-sex marriage. And it has a place for blue-haired singers — and their girlfriends.

Jackson is among a group of Southern cities from Dallas to Durham, N.C., where the digital commons, economic growth and a rising cohort of millennials have helped remake the culture. Many of these cities have found themselves increasingly at odds with their states, and here in a region that remains the most conservative in the country, the conflicts are growing more frequent and particularly pitched.