On this day in 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt shut down the post office in Indianola, Mississippi to protest the town’s refusal to accept Minnie Cox, a black woman, as their postmistress. When Cox resigned under duress, Roosevelt refused to accept her resignation, kept paying her salary, and ordered the U.S. Attorney General to prosecute those threatening her.
Minnie M. Geddings was born in Lexington, Mississippi, in March of 1869 to former slaves, William and Elizabeth Geddings. Few details exist about her early life, but it appears that she lived a life of some privilege compared to most other African Americans living in the Mississippi Delta at the time. As business owners, Minnie’s parents were able to send her to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she was part of one of the largest cohorts of women (over 100) attending Fisk during the period. While at Fisk, she recognized the leadership potential of educated African American women. Geddings graduated from Fisk’s normal school program around 1888, and she moved to Indianola to teach in the new segregated public school. Her future husband, Wayne Wellington Cox, helped establish the school in the early 1880s and served as its principal. The two married in October of 1889, and they later had one daughter, Ethyl.
When Republican William McKinley won the presidential election in 1897, he appointed Cox as postmistress of Sunflower County. Cox operated the Sunflower County post office that served over 3,000 patrons a year and operated out of the Cohen’s Brooklyn Bridge Store in Indianola’s central business district. She installed a telephone for customers’ use, at her own expense, and also opened the post office for a few hours on Sundays after church services for her customers’ convenience.
James, Vardeman, candidate for governor, berated white Indianolans for allowing a “negro wench” to handle their mail. Whites from all classes and backgrounds signed petitions urging Roosevelt to remove Cox from her position as postmistress and replace her with a white man. The town’s white civic and business elite deployed language rooted in racial and sexual stereotypes that disempowered African American women and justified sexual and mob violence against them.
Fearing that a white mob would destroy the post office, Minnie Cox wrote a U. S. Postal Inspector in early December of 1902 “if I don’t resign there will be trouble.” Her fears were not without merit. In 1898, mobs had burned the post offices and homes of two African American postmasters in South Carolina and Georgia. The mobs then murdered both postmasters, as well as the infant daughter of one of the postmasters.
On December 4, 1902, Cox tendered her resignation that would take effect on January 1, 1903. President Roosevelt refused to accept it, later stating, “I cannot consent to take the position that the door of hope—the door of opportunity—is to be shut upon any man, no-matter [sic] how worthy, purely on the grounds of race and color.” Roosevelt’s tender sentiments, however, held no power to stop a lynch mob and did little to limit white Democrats’ control in the state and region. Cox’s resignation was public knowledge, but her situation grew more perilous. Whites in Arkansas and other nearby Southern states threatened to come to Indianola and kill her. A fearful Cox refused to return to the post office, and it remained closed.
Minnie Cox, circa 1900.
Today is the birthday, in 1936, of Roger Miller singer, guitarist and TV star. (1965 UK No.1 & US No.4 single ‘King Of The Road’). He won four Grammy awards in 1965 including Best Country & Western Album. Roger died of lung cancer on October 25th 1991, aged 56. Scottish duo The Proclaimers had the 1990 UK No.9 hit with their version of ‘King Of The Road.’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKF-712iz9w
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