In the midst of the boundless cotton and soya bean fields of the Mississippi Delta, in the heart of one of the poorest American regions and the birthplace of the blues, stands Mound Bayou. Founded by freed slaves in 1887, the town remains 99 per cent black and is utterly wretched and rundown.

Every other house is derelict, the hospital has stood empty since the 1970s, the railway was long ago torn up and battered old trucks rattle down pitted roads overhung by Spanish oaks dripping with moss. The population of what the historical markers called the Oldest US Negro Town has shrunk to barely 2,000, with nearly half the inhabitants living below the poverty line. Half the men are retired, unemployed or incarcerated, and drunks with nothing else to do hang around Smitty’s – a decrepit diner and petrol station and one of the last surviving businesses in Mound Bayou.

Yet something remarkable is happening in this pocket of apparent hopelessness. Its citizens have been gripped by a sense of excitement that they have seldom felt before: America, they hope, is poised to elect its first black president.

Almost the entire town has registered to vote. Kennedy Johnson, the mayor – named after two presidents who championed civil rights – predicts a turnout only fractionally short of 100 per cent. And he believes that of those votes Barack Obama will win almost every one. “It will be history,” Mr Johnson said of the likely victory. “You think what people went through – Martin Luther King and all the other civil rights leaders who died for us to get to this point. It’s got to be emotional for black people.” Preston Holmes, who, at 94, is the town’s oldest citizen and who has tracked Mr Obama’s every movement on CNN, said: “I always hoped I’d live to see this, but I never thought I would.”

Times Archive, 1909: The Mississippi settlements

Gradually in the course of 20 years, the region around Mound Bayou has altered to an astonishing extent

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Nowhere is the excitement greater than in the dilapidated John F. Kennedy high school. Every one of the 30 students of voting age has registered. They have actively recruited their elders, and many plan to be out on election day rounding up the recalcitrant.

The success of Mr Obama has inspired them like nothing else. “I’ve come to realise that I shouldn’t set limits on myself. I should believe in my dreams and really fight to accomplish them,” said Courtney Coleman, 18, whose family has lived off benefits since her father lost his job. She was now determined to go to business school and become a CEO.

“This is the most enthusiasm I’ve ever witnessed, no doubt about it,” said Johnnie Vick, the social studies teacher, adding that 90 per cent of his students now wanted to go to college. Mr Obama’s success had “definitely increased their ambition. They now have goals of going into business, politics and fields where they actually make a difference.”

Mr Obama has brought hope to a community where there was none, but Mount Bayou has not always been so desperate. Carved from the wilderness in 1887 by the former slaves Isaiah Montgomery and Benjamin Green and their followers, the town was a beacon of hope for freed slaves – a sanctuary where they could live without persecution by Southern whites determined to roll back the advances blacks had made after the civil war. For several decades it flourished. Its leaders banned alcohol and gambling and encouraged education.

In 1907 President Roosevelt stopped his train in Mound Bayou and called it “an object lesson full of hope for coloured people”. By the 1920s it had a population of 8,000, and its own utility companies, cotton mills, bank, railway station, sawmill and newspaper.

It was dubbed the Jewel of the Delta.

Then came the Depression, a slump in the cotton price and the great migration of Southern blacks to industrial cities in the North. Mound Bayou began its long decline.

It remained a sanctuary, offering education and healthcare to blacks during the years of segregation, and providing refuge for black sharecroppers who could not repay usurious loans, for those escaping lynch mobs, and for civil rights activists facing vengeful whites in the 1950s and 1960s. Until well into the 1960s it was where African-Americans from across the Delta came to live without fear of harassment, and there was a bar on every corner.

But Mound Bayou paid a heavy price for remaining all black – today the only white people are the nuns at a Catholic mission and three women who married black men. For decades it was “red-lined”, meaning that white-owned banks and businesses refused to invest there. “They still do it, but they’ve a smart way of doing it now – they say your credit is not good enough,” Mr Johnson said.

Starved of finance, the economy shrivelled and businesses closed. A grocery store, launderette, haulage company and furniture shop owned by Mr Johnson’s father all went bust. “We have suffered tremendously from being an all-black town. It makes it hard to survive,” said the mayor.

The average household income is now $19,700 (£12,400), far below the $50,200 national average. There are few jobs outside the public sector. All that proliferates are churches. with 21 each offering its own brand of solace.

Mr Obama promises not solace, but tangible improvements to their lives – or so the townsfolk believe. “Barack Obama will make it easier for people like me to go to college,” said Shemeka Phipps, 18, whose father is in prison and family lives off benefits.

“I think he’ll bring jobs,” said Henry Bonner, 51, a barber.

Mr Johnson is delighted that Mr Obama has lifted the town from its torpor, but he fears that the Democratic candidate cannot possibly meet such expectations.

“People are saying it will be lovely for black folks, but he can’t fix everything,” he said. “People think he’s going to be the next Jesus Christ.”

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