Cotton Plant could use it. The town once had four cotton gins, but no more. The veneer mill that once employed 400 people is long gone. The population, which peaked at about 1,800 during World War II, has dwindled to just 653.

Decades ago, as the mechanization of agriculture wiped out the need for field hands, many black residents migrated north for factory jobs. Then in the early 1970s, many whites left town when the schools were forced to integrate. The schools are a moot issue now: The town’s high school closed in 2004, Mr. Ryland said, and the elementary school in 2014.

Today the city is 73 percent black, and 30 percent of residents live below the poverty line.

On a recent weekday, Mr. Ryland offered a tour of what was left, driving down a Main Street lined with crumbling and boarded-up storefronts. A flier in the window of a shuttered variety store advertised a long-ago Christmas parade. The front windows of an antique store were broken and the rear wall was open to the elements, with some old clothes still hanging on racks inside. The town no longer has a bank, a grocery store, a liquor store, or even a gas station. A small convenience store, with an even smaller cafe in the back, is one of the few remaining retail businesses.

Mr. Ryland pointed out the big cotton warehouse that he would love to see taken over by an e-commerce company. He drove past a mountain range of 250,000 discarded tires — a fire hazard and breeding ground for mosquitoes — that has drawn a fine from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.