Minnie M. Cox

Minnie Cox c. 1900

Minnie M. (Geddings) Cox (1869–1933) was an American teacher who was the first African-American woman to serve as a postmaster in the United States.[1] She became the center of a national controversy in the early 1900s when local white citizens attempted to force her out of her job. She also cofounded one of the earliest black-owned banks in the state, as well as an insurance company.

Biography

Minnie M. Geddings was born in 1869 to Mary Geddings and William Geddings in Lexington, Mississippi.[2] At the age of 19, she graduated from Fisk University with a teaching degree.[3][4] She taught school for a time and in 1889 married Wayne W. Cox, then a school principal in Indianola, Mississippi.[1][3] They were active in the Republican Party.[3][4]

In 1891, during the administration of President Benjamin Harrison, she was appointed postmaster of Indianola.[2][3] She was the first African-American woman to hold such a position.[1] Cox lost her job in 1892 under President Grover Cleveland (a Democrat) but was reappointed in 1897 by President William McKinley and continued to serve under President Theodore Roosevelt.[3][4]

Cox was considered an excellent postmaster.[5] During the Roosevelt administration, however, local white citizens began to agitate to expel African-Americans from good jobs such as the one Cox held.[3][4] The white supremacist politician James K. Vardaman led a targeted campaign in his newspaper, The Greenwood Commonwealth, to force her resignation.[3][4] Eventually the citizens of Indianola voted for Cox to resign a year before her commission was due to expire.[3] Cox initially refused to step down, although she let it be known that she would not try for reappointment after her current commission expired.[5]

As threats against Cox escalated and both the mayor and sheriff refused to protect her,[1] she changed her mind and offered her resignation effective Jan. 1, 1903.[3][2] President Roosevelt refused to accept her resignation and instead closed the Indianola post office, indicating that it would not reopen until Cox could safely resume her duties.[3] The president also ordered the U.S. Attorney General to prosecute those Indianola citizens who had threatened violence against Cox.[3] A few days later, Cox left town over concerns for her own safety.[5]

The situation became a national news story,[6] sparking a debate about "race, states' rights, and federal power".[7]

When Cox's appointment expired in 1904, the Indianola post office reopened with a different postmaster.[4] Cox and her husband returned to Indianola, where they opened the Delta Penny Savings Bank, one of the earliest black-owned banks in the state.[7] They also founded one of the first black-owned insurance companies in the United States to offer whole life insurance, the Mississippi Life Insurance Company.[7] They were strong supporters of black businesses in the state.[4]

After her husband died in 1925, Cox remarried. She and her second husband, George Key Hamilton, moved to Tennessee and later to Rockford, Illinois. She died in 1933.[4]

The Minnie Cox Post Office Building in Indianola.

Honors

In 2008, a post office building in Indianola was named the Minnie Cox Post Office Building "in tribute to all that she accomplished by breaking barriers".[1][8]

Cox Street and Wayne and Minnie Cox Park in Indianola are both named for Cox and her husband.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Minnie Cox Post Office Building". Congressional Record — House, July 14, 2008, H6418.
  2. 1 2 3 "Minnie Cox: A First for Mississippi". African American Registry. Retrieved Feb. 1, 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "Minnie M. Cox: A Postmaster’s Story". National Postal Museum, Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved Feb. 1, 2017.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Momodu, Samuel. "Cox, Minnie M. (1869–1933)". Blackpast.org: An Online Reference Guide to African American History. Retrieved Feb. 1, 2017.
  5. 1 2 3 Gatewood, Willard B. "Theodore Roosevelt and the Indianola Affair". The Journal of Negro History 53:1 (January, 1968), 48-49.
  6. ↑ "Mrs. Minnie Cox, Postmistress of Indianola: A Faithful and Efficient Official Driven from Office by Southern White Brutes". Cleveland Gazette, Feb. 7, 1903.
  7. 1 2 3 Garrett-Scott, Shennette. "Everything that is Mean, Damnable and Cursed: Minnie Geddings Cox and the Indianola Affair". MississippiHumanities, the website of the Mississippi Humanities Council. Retrieved Feb. 1, 2017.
  8. ↑ Derfner, Joel. Untitled post, June 15, 2009. Joelderfner.com. Retrieved Feb. 1, 2017.
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