Forgive me in advance for a lame question - but I'm trying to map five cities on a US map, that's all I want to see at the end of the exercise. Atlanta, Seattle, Dallas, Chicago and Washington DC. I have mapped the cities but Atlanta and DC names do not show up. Any suggestions?

Try to right-click and "Highlight" them. This will mark them in yellow but may also help to make the name show up. Otherwise, try doing Pushpins or Textboxes on the map using the drawing toolbar.
Good luck!
Eric