A note on the population.
I strongly suspect the recent census data is bungled. It makes sense that the town is shrinking, but probably not as much as is showing on paper.
If this story sounds incredible to you-- you need to take the super tiny size of the town into account to understand how this could be happening.
It looks like this church is the main source of social organization in the area-- though despite the towns size there are probably like 8 churches there.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/First%20Baptist%20Church%20Newbern,%20Al/273998409599258/