ATLANTA

city, capital of Georgia, U.S., and seat (1853) of Fulton county (but also partly in De Kalb county). It lies in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, just south of the Chattahoochee River. Atlanta is Georgia's largest city and the principal trade and transportation centre of the southeastern United States. The city owes its existence to the railroads, the routes of which were determined by geography. Lying as it does at the southern extremity of the Appalachian Mountains, it became the gateway through which most overland traffic had to pass between the southern seaboard and the region to the west. In 1837 a spot near what is now Five Points, in the centre of the present-day city, was selected for the southern terminus of a railroad to be built northward to Chattanooga, Tenn. The location was first known as Terminus and then as Marthasville; at its incorporation as a city in 1845, it was named Atlanta for the Western and Atlantic Railroad. Several other rail lines had converged on the city by 1860. During the Civil War, Atlanta became a supply depot, a site of Southern war industries, and the keystone of Confederate rail transportation east of the Mississippi River. It was thus the prime military objective of General William Tecumseh Sherman's invasion of Georgia from Chattanooga (see Atlanta Campaign). The city fell to his Union troops on Sept. 1, 1864, and was converted into a military camp. On November 15, Sherman departed on his famous march to the sea, but not before much of the city had been burned. During Reconstruction, Atlanta was a centre of federal government activities in the South. It was the site of the convention that drew up the Georgia constitution of 1868, and under the Republican state administration it became the state capital (chosen permanently by popular referendum, 1877). Atlanta came to epitomize the spirit of the New South, having risen from the ashes of the Civil War and having become an advocate of reconciliation with the North in order to restore business. This spirit was dramatized by three Atlanta expositions: the International Cotton (1881), the Piedmont (1887), and the Cotton States and International (1895). At the latter, Booker T. Washington made his historic declaration (the Atlanta Compromise), urging blacks to seek economic security before political or social equality with whites. Atlanta still occupies a position of strategic importance at the focal point of a network of rail lines and interstate highways. Hartsfield-Atlanta International Airport, 8 miles (13 km) southwest of downtown Atlanta, opened in 1980 and has become one of the nation's busiest airports. Atlanta remains the financial and commercial capital of the Southeast and is its most important distribution centre. Printing and publishing, government services, and banking and insurance are supplemented by industries producing automobiles, electronics and electrical equipment, chemicals, processed foods, and pulp and paper products. Atlanta is also the focus of federal government activity in the Southeast and is the headquarters of the Sixth Federal Reserve District. The city itself is relatively small but is surrounded by a sprawl of low-density suburbs. Atlanta is a major educational centre, with more than 20 degree-granting institutions in the metropolitan area. The city has a prestigious consortium of black colleges; the most important of these are Morehouse College (1867), Spelman College (1881), and Clark Atlanta University, which was formed by the merger of Atlanta University (1865) with Clark College (1869) in 1988. Others schools include Emory University (1836), Georgia Institute of Technology (1885), Georgia State University (1913), and Oglethorpe University (1835). Atlanta is the chief medical centre of the Southeast and is home to the Centers for Disease Control, a division of the U.S. Public Health Service. Atlanta's notable buildings include the State Capitol (1889) and the Cyclorama (in Grant Park), containing a gigantic painting of the Battle of Atlanta. The Atlanta Memorial Arts Center (1968) includes a museum, a symphony hall, an art school, and a theatre. The Olympic Stadium was built for use during the 1996 Summer games. The spirit of the city tends to be liberal within the framework of Southern conservatism, though its customs have been influenced by the Protestant church traditions of the Bible Belt. Martin Luther King, Jr., is buried in the Ebenezer Baptist Churchyard. In 1973 Atlanta became the first major city in the South to elect a black mayor. Pop. (1992 est.) city, 410,876; Atlanta MSA, 3,101,010.