Minnie M. Cox

Minnie M. (Geddings) Cox (1869–1933) was an American teacher who was one of the first African-American women to serve as a postmaster in the United States.[1] (Anne Dumas in 1872 became the first female African American postmaster).[2] Cox 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.

Minnie Cox c. 1900

Biography

Minnie M. Geddings was born in 1869 to Mary Geddings and William Geddings in Lexington, Mississippi.[3] At the age of 19, she graduated from Fisk University with a teaching degree.[4][5] She taught school for a time and in 1889 married Wayne W. Cox, then a school principal in Indianola, Mississippi.[1][4] They were active in the Republican Party.[4][5]

In 1891, during the administration of President Benjamin Harrison, she was appointed postmaster of Indianola.[3][4] She was the first African-American woman to hold such a position.[1] Cox lost her job in 1892 under President Grover Cleveland but was reappointed in 1897 by President William McKinley and continued to serve under President Theodore Roosevelt.[4][5]

Cox was considered an excellent postmaster.[6] During the Roosevelt administration, however, local white citizens began to agitate to expel African-Americans from good jobs such as the one Cox held.[4][5] The white supremacist politician James K. Vardaman led a targeted campaign in his newspaper, The Greenwood Commonwealth, to force her resignation.[4][5] Eventually the citizens of Indianola voted for Cox to resign a year before her commission was due to expire.[4] Cox initially refused to step down, although she let it be known that she would not try for reappointment after her current commission expired.[6]

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.[4][3] 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.[4] The president also ordered the U.S. Attorney General to prosecute those Indianola citizens who had threatened violence against Cox.[4] A few days later, Cox left town over concerns for her own safety.[6]

The situation became a national news story,[7] sparking a debate about "race, states' rights, and federal power".[8]

When Cox's appointment expired in 1904, the Indianola post office reopened with a different postmaster.[5] 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.[8] 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.[8] They were strong supporters of black businesses in the state.[5]

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.[5]

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][9]

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

References
  1. "Minnie Cox Post Office Building". Congressional Record — House, July 14, 2008, H6418.
  2. Philip F. Rubio, There's Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice and Equality (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010, p. 174).
  3. "Minnie Cox: A First for Mississippi". African American Registry. Retrieved Feb. 1, 2017.
  4. "Minnie M. Cox: A Postmaster's Story". National Postal Museum Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 24 November 2020.
  5. Momodu, Samuel. "Cox, Minnie M. (1869–1933)". Blackpast.org: An Online Reference Guide to African American History. Retrieved Feb. 1, 2017.
  6. Gatewood, Willard B. "Theodore Roosevelt and the Indianola Affair". The Journal of Negro History 53:1 (January, 1968), 48-49.
  7. "Mrs. Minnie Cox, Postmistress of Indianola: A Faithful and Efficient Official Driven from Office by Southern White Brutes". Cleveland Gazette, Feb. 7, 1903.
  8. 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.
  9. Derfner, Joel. Untitled post, June 15, 2009. Joelderfner.com. Retrieved Feb. 1, 2017.
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