Nashville, Tennessee in the context of "USA Today Co."

Tennessee (/ˌtɛnɪˈsiː/ , locally /ˈtɛnɪsi/), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the southwest, and Missouri to the northwest. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. According to the United States Census Bureau, the state's estimated population as of 2024 is 7.22 million.

Tennessee is geographically, culturally, and legally divided into three Grand Divisions of East, Middle, and West Tennessee. Nashville is the state's capital and largest city, and anchors its largest metropolitan area. Tennessee has diverse terrain and landforms, and from east to west, contains a mix of cultural features characteristic of Appalachia, the Upland South, and the Deep South. The Blue Ridge Mountains along the eastern border reach some of the highest elevations in eastern North America, and the Cumberland Plateau contains many scenic valleys and waterfalls. The central part of the state is marked by cavernous bedrock and irregular rolling hills, and level, fertile plains define West Tennessee. The state is twice bisected by the Tennessee River, and the Mississippi River forms its western border. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the nation's most visited national park, is in eastern Tennessee.

Aaron Douglas (May 26, 1899 – February 2, 1979) was an American painter, illustrator, and visual arts educator. He was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He developed his art career painting murals and creating illustrations that addressed social issues around race and segregation in the United States by utilizing African-centric imagery. Douglas set the stage for young, African-American artists to enter the public-arts realm through his involvement with the Harlem Artists Guild. In 1944, he concluded his art career by founding the Art Department at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He taught visual art classes at Fisk University until his retirement in 1966. Douglas is known as a prominent leader in modern African-American art whose work influenced artists for years to come.

The Nashville sound is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the 1950s in Nashville, Tennessee. It replaced the dominance of the rough honky tonk music with "smooth strings and choruses", "sophisticated background vocals" and "smooth tempos" associated with traditional pop. It was an attempt "to revive country sales, which had been devastated by the rise of rock 'n' roll".

The Natchez Trace, also known as the Old Natchez Trace, is a historic forest trail within the Southeastern United States which extends roughly 440 miles (710 km) from Nashville, Tennessee, to Natchez, Mississippi, linking the Cumberland, Tennessee, and Mississippi rivers.

Native Americans created and used the trail for centuries. Early European and American explorers, traders, and immigrants used it in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. European Americans founded inns, also known as "stands", along the Trace to serve food and lodging to travelers. Most of these stands closed as travel shifted to steamboats on the Mississippi and other rivers. The heyday of the Trace began in the 1770s and ended in the 1820s; by the 1830s, the route was already in disrepair and its time as a major interregional commercial route had come to an end.

The Natchez Trace Parkway is a limited-access national parkway in the Southeastern United States that commemorates the historic Natchez Trace and preserves sections of that original trail. Its central feature is a two-lane road that extends 444 miles (715 km) from Natchez, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee. Access to the parkway is limited, with more than 50 access points in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. The southern end of the route is in Natchez at its intersection with Liberty Road, and the northern end is northeast of Fairview, Tennessee, in the suburban community of Pasquo, at an intersection with Tennessee State Route 100. In addition to Natchez and Nashville, larger cities along the route include Jackson and Tupelo, Mississippi, and Florence, Alabama.

Paducah (/pəˈduːkə/ pə-DOO-kə) is a home rule-class city in the Upland South, and the county seat of McCracken County, Kentucky, United States. The most populous city in the Jackson Purchase region, it is located in the Southeastern United States at the confluence of the Tennessee and the Ohio rivers, halfway between St. Louis, Missouri, to the northwest and Nashville, Tennessee, to the southeast. As of the 2020 census, the population was 27,137, up from 25,024 in 2010. Twenty blocks of the city's downtown have been designated as a historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Paducah is the principal city of the Paducah metropolitan area, which includes McCracken, Ballard, Carlisle and Livingston counties in Kentucky and Massac County in Illinois. The total population of the metro area was 103,481 in 2020. The Paducah–Mayfield combined statistical area had a total population of 140,138.

The Cumberland River is a major waterway of the Southern United States. The 688-mile-long (1,107 km) river drains almost 18,000 square miles (47,000 km) of southern Kentucky and north-central Tennessee. The river flows generally west from a source in the Appalachian Mountains to its confluence with the Ohio River near Paducah, Kentucky, and the mouth of the Tennessee River. Major tributaries include the Obey, Caney Fork, Stones, and Red Rivers.

Although the Cumberland River basin is predominantly rural, there are also some large cities on the river, including Nashville and Clarksville, both in Tennessee.

Interstate 40 (I-40) is a major east–west transcontinental Interstate Highway in the southeastern and southwestern portions of the United States. At a length of 2,556.61 miles (4,114.46 km), it is the third-longest Interstate Highway in the country, after I-90 and I-80. From west to east, it passes through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Its western terminus is at I-15 in Barstow, California, while its eastern terminus is at a concurrency with U.S. Route 117 (US 117) and North Carolina Highway 132 (NC 132) in Wilmington, North Carolina. Major cities served by the Interstate include Flagstaff, Arizona; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Amarillo, Texas; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Fort Smith and Little Rock in Arkansas; Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville in Tennessee; and Asheville, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Durham, Raleigh, and Wilmington in North Carolina.

I-40 begins in the Mojave Desert in California, and then proceeds through the Colorado Plateau in Arizona and the southern tip of the Rocky Mountains in New Mexico. It then traverses the Great Plains through the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma, and passes south of the Ozarks in Arkansas. The freeway crosses the Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina, before terminating in the Atlantic Coastal Plain near the Atlantic Ocean.

New South, New South Democracy or New South Creed is a slogan in the history of the American South first used after the American Civil War. Reformers used it to call for a modernization of society and attitudes, an integration more fully with the United States as a whole, and rejection of the economy and traditions of the Old South and the slavery-based plantation system of the prewar period. The term was coined by its leading proponent, Atlanta editor Henry W. Grady, in 1874, and sought to modernize the South while maintaining white supremacy through Jim Crow laws and disenfranchisement.

In the mid-20th century, the meaning of the term evolved as the Civil Rights Movement challenged segregation and white dominance. The dismantling of Jim Crow laws, economic diversification, and increasing urbanization led to a more inclusive and economically competitive South. This period saw the emergence of African American political power, the growth of cities like Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, and Houston, and the rise of industries beyond agriculture.