Joe Biden channels FDR in Warm Springs, Georgia in the hopes of breaking Republican hold on state

Above an entrance off to one side of the old train station in Macon, Georgia, are three words etched in stone: “Colored waiting room”.

The letters, each one carved in capitals, are a reminder of the dark and not-so-distant past of racial segregation in southern America.

A plaque nearby explains it was not until the 1960s that the ‘Jim Crow’ segregation laws fell. Darryl Scott, a 68-year-old local sitting on the wall outside, remembers those days.

“Changes have been made. Some have not been made,” Mr Scott, who is African-American, says through his dark blue Joe Biden-Kamala Harris mask.

He remembers avoiding the white-only restaurants as a youngster. He understands the sign is being kept as a warning from history but he would rather it was gone. It is too painful.

Mr Scott was one of a few dozen supporters who turned out on a humid early afternoon to hear Jill Biden, wife of the Democratic presidential nominee and potential first lady, deliver a stump speech.

Georgia is not obvious Biden country. This is the Deep South. No Democrat has taken the state in a presidential election since Bill Clinton 28 years ago.

Georgia joined the Confederacy when it split from the Union. It is deeply religious and deeply conservative. For decades it has been redder than red.

But now the cracks are showing. Polls have Mr Biden and Donald Trump, the US president and his Republican rival in the election, neck-and-neck in the state.

If Georgia falls, so too could other southern Republican strongholds like North Carolina and perhaps even Texas.

It has Democrats, even those scarred by the poll-defying Trump win of 2016, whispering: Could there be a Biden landslide?

Those queuing for the socially-distanced seating to hear Mrs Biden believe it was possible.

“This is going to be a turnout election and our people are turning out,” said DuBose Porter, the 67-year-old former chairman of Georgia’s Democratic Party.

He said between 2016 and 2020 more than a million new people in the state had registered to vote, many young and African-American - groups who tend to back the Democrats.

Almost three million people have already voted in Georgia this election, closing in on 2016’s total of a little over four million with a week still left. The remarkable turnout surge has Democrats optimistic.

When Mrs Biden eventually arrives, more than an hour late, she is dressed in bright red and smiling ear to ear, exuding confidence.   She says fashions have morphed since she first met Mr Biden in the 1970s, before adding. “What hasn’t changed is the character of the man I married."

It is that issue - character - that the Democrats are putting at the heart of this election and the race for Georgia. Mr Biden has projected himself as decent and empathetic, trying to draw a contrast to Mr Trump.

But 10 minutes down the road at Bibb County’s Republican Party headquarters, Mrs Biden's optimism for victory is given short shrift by those sitting down after a hard day of door-knocking.

The office, one of only a handful occupied in a single-story business park just off a highway, has lifesize cut-outs of the president and Melania Trump, the first lady, in one corner.

Calvin Palmer, 71, the local party’s chairman, is upbeat. He doubts the polls, saying he knows people who lie to pollsters when they call to “screw with their heads”.

Mark Morgan, 59, dressed in shorts and a Republican candidate’s T-shirt, is dismissive of the idea the Democrats can take Georgia. His family has lived in the area for 150 years.

Why does he support Trump? “Because I love America and I don’t want to see us go socialist. The Democrats, as far as I am concerned, will create a Godless, communist country,” Mr Morgan replies.

The battle for Georgia boils down to urban versus rural. The Democrats want to rack up votes in the cities and hope that can outweigh the overwhelmingly pro-Trump countryside.

Driving the 75 miles between Macon and Warm Springs, the signs tell that story. Amid the Halloween decorations are rows and rows of Trump placards, some alongside others that read “Choose God” or “Pray!”. There are almost no Biden signs.

Warm Springs is the destination Mr Biden has picked for a speech on his first visit to Georgia since becoming the nominee. It is being used by the campaign to project confidence and ambition, that Mr Biden really can flip southern Republican states.

The town is famous for its healing waters and Franklin D Roosevelt, the former US president and Democratic Party titan who was left wheelchair-bound after suffering from polio in 1921.   Outside FDR’s ‘Little White House', the property where he would rest and recuperate every year, Biden and Trump supporters - perhaps 50 of each - clash verbally ahead of the Biden visit.

The Biden supporters, mainly African-American, chant “Let’s Go Joe”. The Trump supporters drive past in trucks, some mounted with flags, wearing red Make America Great Again hats.

Shirley Harris, a 70-year-old African-American woman holding a Biden sign, says Mr Trump has governed too much in the interests of the rich, and predicts Georgia will go Democratic.

“He is not a president of the people. He couldn’t care less about working class people. Joe Biden has proved again and again he does,” she says.

Mr Biden in his speech, delivered before a backdrop of Georgia woods, likens today’s crises - a pandemic and an economic crash - to those faced by FDR, who led America through the Great Depression and World War Two.

“He overcame so much for so many”, Mr Biden says of the past president, drawing parallels between Mr Roosevelt’s approach to leadership and the one he would display if he wins on November 3.

Near the end of the speech, Mr Biden tells the story of when FDR died at the Little White House and how crowds lined the Georgia train tracks as his body was taken to Washington DC.

One man fell to the ground in grief and was asked if he knew the president. ”No,” Mr Biden quotes the man saying. “But he knew me. He knew me.”