[8] Named in honor of King George II of Great Britain, the Georgia Colony extended from South Carolina down to Spanish Florida and westward to French Louisiana along the Mississippi River.

[9] In the late 19th century, during the post-Reconstruction period, Georgia's economy underwent significant changes, driven by a coalition of influential politicians, business leaders, and journalists, notably Henry W. Grady, who promoted the "New South" ideology focused on reconciliation and industrialization.

[10] In the mid-20th century, several notable figures from Georgia, including Martin Luther King Jr., emerged as key leaders in the civil rights movement.

Moving south, the Piedmont plateau stretches from the foothills of the Blue Ridge to the Fall Line, an escarpment that marks the transition to the Coastal Plain in the southern region of the state.

In December 1864, a large swath of the state from Atlanta to Savannah, was destroyed during General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea, during which 18,253 Georgian soldiers were killed, representing roughly one of every five then in service of the Confederacy.

An Atlanta-born Baptist minister who was part of the educated middle class that had developed in Atlanta's African-American community, Martin Luther King Jr., emerged as a national leader in the civil rights movement.

In 1956, civil rights riots occurred at the Sugar Bowl in Atlanta following a ash between Georgia Tech's president Blake R. Van Leer and Governor Marvin Griffin.

Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. testified before Congress in support of the Civil Rights Act, and Governor Carl Sanders worked with the Kennedy administration charged with ensuring the state's compliance.

In 2024, it was announced that Atlanta would host multiple games during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which further substantiated the economic investment and growth in the city and state.

[citation needed] The border then takes a sharp turn around the tip of Rabun County, at latitude 35°N, though from this point it diverges slightly south (due to inaccuracies in the original survey, conducted in 1818).

[citation needed] An 1818 survey erroneously placed Georgia's border with Tennessee one mile (1.6 km) south of the intended location of the 35th parallel north.

[29] Georgia consists of five principal physiographic regions: The Cumberland Plateau, Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, Blue Ridge Mountains, Piedmont, and the Atlantic coastal plain.

Georgia's native trees include red cedar, a variety of pines, oaks, hollies, cypress, sweetgum, scaly-bark and white hickories, and sabal palmetto.

East Georgia is in the subtropical coniferous forest biome and conifer species as other broadleaf evergreen flora make up the majority of the southern and coastal regions.

[71] As of 2011[update], 58.8% of Georgia's population younger than 1 were minorities (meaning they had at least one parent who was not non-Hispanic white) compared to other states like California with 75.1%, Texas with 69.8%, and New York with 55.6%.

[78] According to the Pew Research Center, the composition of religious affiliation in Georgia was 67% Protestant, 9% Catholic, 1% Mormon, 1% Jewish, 0.5% Muslim, 0.5% Buddhist, and 0.5% Hindu.

It has been the site of growth in finance, insurance, technology, manufacturing, real estate, service, logistics, transportation, film, communications, convention and trade show businesses and industries, while tourism is important to the economy.

It includes the towns of Cartersville, Calhoun, Ringgold and Dalton[101] In November 2009, the South Korean automaker Kia Corporation began production in Georgia.

[109] Movies such as Passengers, Forrest Gump, Contagion, Hidden Figures, Sully, Baby Driver, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther, Birds of Prey, and many more, were filmed around Georgia.

Popular novels related to this include Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, Olive Ann Burns' Cold Sassy Tree, and Alice Walker's The Color Purple.

A number of noted authors, poets and playwrights have lived in Georgia, such as James Dickey, Flannery O'Connor, Sidney Lanier, Frank Yerby and Lewis Grizzard.

[145] The HOPE Scholarship, funded by the state lottery, is available to all Georgia residents who have graduated from high school or earned a General Educational Development certificate.

[citation needed][159] Georgia voted Republican in six consecutive presidential elections from 1996 to 2016, a streak that was broken when the state went for Democratic candidate Joe Biden in 2020.

Some elements, such as requiring payment of poll taxes and passing literacy tests, prevented blacks from registering to vote; their exclusion from the political system lasted into the 1960s and reduced the Republican Party to a non-competitive status in the early 20th century.

It required that any male at least 21 years of age wanting to register to vote must also be of good character and able to pass a test on citizenship, be able to read and write provisions of the U.S. and Georgia constitutions, or own at least forty acres of land or $500 in property.

According to the 1960 census, the proportion of Georgia's population that was African American was 28%; hundreds of thousands of blacks had left the state in the Great Migration to the North and Midwest.

Democratic candidates have tended to win a higher percentage of the vote in the areas where black voters are most numerous,[170] as well as in the cities among liberal urban populations (especially Atlanta and Athens), and the central and southwestern portion of the state.

From the late 20th century, Atlanta attracted headquarters and relocated workers of national companies, becoming more diverse, liberal and cosmopolitan than many areas of the state.

On March 18, 1998, the Georgia House of Representatives passed a resolution naming the portion of Interstate 75, which runs from the Chattahoochee River northward to the Tennessee state line the Larry McDonald Memorial Highway.

[198] Naomi Chapman Woodruff, originally from Idaho, was responsible for developing a peanut breeding program in Georgia which lead to a harvest of nearly five times the typical amount.