The state of Georgia is located in the Deep South region of the Southern United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee and North Carolina; to the northeast by South Carolina; to the southeast by the Atlantic Ocean; to the south by Florida; and to the west by Alabama. Georgia is the 24th-largest in area and 8th-most populous of the 50 United States. Its 2019 estimated population was 10,617,423, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Both the state's capital and its largest city, Atlanta was founded in 1837 as the end of the Western & Atlantic railroad line. Today the fast-growing city remains a transportation hub, not just for the country but also for the world: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is the world's busiest in daily passenger flights. Direct flights to Europe, South America, and Asia have made metro Atlanta easily accessible to the more than 1,000 international businesses that operate in the city and the more than 50 countries that have representation in the city through consulates, trade offices, and chambers of commerce. The city has emerged as a banking center and boasts the third largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the country.

For more than four decades, Atlanta has been linked to the Civil Rights Movement. Civil rights leaders moved forward; they were the visionaries who saw a new South, a new Atlanta. They believed in peace. They made monumental sacrifices for that peace. And because of them, Atlanta became a fast-paced modern city which opened its doors to the 1996 Olympics.

In the past two decades, Atlanta has experienced unprecedented growth -- the official city population remains steady, at about 420,000, but the metro population has grown in the past decade by nearly 40 percent, from 2.9 million to 4.1 million people. A good measure of this growth is the ever-changing downtown skyline, along with skyscrapers constructed in the Midtown, Buckhead, and outer perimeter (fringing I-285) business districts. The Atlanta metropolitan area, with an estimated population of more than 6 million people in 2019, is the 9th most populous metropolitan area in the United States and contains about 57% of Georgia's entire population.

Atlanta is the capital city of the Southeast… A city of the future with strong ties to its past. The old in new Atlanta is the soul of the city, the heritage that enhances the quality of life in a contemporary city. In the turbulent 60s, Atlanta was "the city too busy to hate." And today, in the 21st century, Atlanta is the "city not too busy to care.”