"Southern". No, New England too. Actually anywhere people don't waste food.
"Poor people". Sure the wealthy got the ham but they ate soup too, whereas the poor only got soup.

I love smoked hocks. I use them in 15-bean soup, but my favorite by far is to use them to make greens.

I take one or two large smoked hamhocks, they come sliced, right through the bone so I get discs of ankle/foot about 3/4" thick. I separate the discs, and tear off the bigger pieces of meat, not too carefully, dice it, and then throw all of it in a pot with a couple quarts of water and bring it to a boil. I add salt and pepper to taste.

While the ham hocks are coming to a boil, I take my collard greens which come in bunches about the size and shape of a bowling pin, I take about two bundles and slice them up into "discs" (across the long axis of the bowling pin) about 3/4" wide. Sometimes I chop the wider sections of the stems into smaller pieces. Sometimes the bundles of greens can contain sand or dirt, washing them before chopping them is recommended. I put the chopped collards into my biggest soup pot. I repeat the process with a bunch of mustard greens. They're a bit sharper in taste. My pot can hold three of these bundles easily, four if I add the fourth later after the first parts have cooked down a bit.

Now the hamhocks and the water they were boiled in is combined with the chopped greens, more salt and pepper to taste and enough water to cover it. I bring it all to a vigorous boil, then turn it down to a simmer. It makes a ton of greens, and will last a week in the fridge. Watch out for little chunks of bone, those are for the dogs. The meat from the hamhocks is soooo tender, it all just falls off the bone. The liquid is delicious when sopped up with cornbread.

Serious comfort food.

You have clearly never sampled the pea soup in the Okay, This Is The Most Recent Recipe Thread.

Baked Beans in a Crockpot there too. Also a pressure cooker mod of the recipe, for anyone who has one of those cluttering up the back of a kitchen cabinet.

My dad's French Canadian sisters all made a dish called 'Pig's feet', where you brown the flour, boil down the pork hocks all day on the stove, add cloves, potatoes, dumplings. I've never tried making it myself, but man is it delish.