[6] Mound Bayou has a 96.8% African-American majority population in 2020, one of the largest of any community in the United States.

Mound Bayou traces its origin to freed African Americans from the community of Davis Bend, Mississippi.

The prolonged agricultural depression, falling cotton prices, flooding by the Mississippi River, and white hostility in the region contributed to the economic failure of Davis Bend.

In 1892, the Mound Bayou Normal Institute, a black school was founded by the American Missionary Association.

From the platform, he proclaimed that he was witnessing “an object lesson full of hope for the colored people and therefore full of hope for the white people, too.” Four years later, Washington, in a speech to a crowd of thousands, hailed Mound Bayou as a “place where a Negro may get inspiration by seeing what other members of his race have accomplished...[and] where he has an opportunity to learn some of the fundamental duties and responsibilities of social and civic life.” [8] By 1900 two-thirds of the owners of land in the bottomlands were black farmers.

With the loss of political power due to state disenfranchisement, high debt and continuing agricultural problems, most of them lost their land and by 1920 were landless sharecroppers.

Shortly after a fire destroyed much of the business district, Mound Bayou began to revive in 1942 after the opening of the Taborian Hospital by the International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor, a fraternal organization.

For more than two decades, under its Chief Grand Mentor Perry M. Smith, the hospital provided low-cost health care to thousands of black people in the Mississippi Delta.

Howard owned a plantation of more than 1,000 acres (4.0 km2), a home-construction firm, and a small zoo, and he built the first swimming pool for black people in Mississippi.

Howard introduced Evers to civil rights activism through the Regional Council of Negro Leadership which organized a boycott against service stations that refused to provide restrooms for black people.

While the rest of Mississippi was violently segregated, inside the city there were no racial codes ... At a time when blacks faced repercussions as severe as death for registering to vote, Mound Bayou residents were casting ballots in every election.

The city has a proud history of credit unions, insurance companies, a hospital, five newspapers, and a variety of businesses owned, operated, and patronized by black residents.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city of Mound Bayou has a total area of 0.9 square miles (2.3 km2), all land.

The city of Mound Bayou is served by the North Bolivar Consolidated School District,[16] which operates I.T.

According to a 1915 report in the Cincinnati Labor Advocate, Mound Bayou's school was attended by more than 300 students who were forced to make use of equipment held to be "inadequate for 50 pupils".