That Time Teddy Roosevelt Battled Racism in a Small Mississippi Post Office

By Karen Harris | December 26, 2022

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Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919), the 26th President of the United States (1901-09) sitting at his desk working. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Minnie M. Cox was a college-educated, politically active, progressive-thinking, intelligent, organized, and capable woman living in Indianola, Mississippi, north of Jackson. She was also an African American woman. After she was appointed to serve as the postmistress of Indianola, she was the target of threats by some of the white citizens of the town. Things got so bad that President Theodore Roosevelt got involved in 1903, though in the end, the people of this Southern town got what they wanted … Cox was out, and a white postmaster took her place. Let’s take a closer look at the time Teddy Roosevelt battled racism in a small Mississippi post office in 1903.

Minnie M. Cox, a Remarkable Woman

Minnie Cox was born Minnie M. Geddings in 1868 in Lexington, Mississippi. Her parents Mary and William Geddings owned a restaurant which helped them to be better off financially than most Black families in the deep South at that time. They were able to afford to send Minnie to college. In 1888, she graduated from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, a historically black university, with a degree in teaching. She took a teaching position at the Indianola Colored Public School. There, she met William Cox, a fellow teacher who also served as the school’s principal. They married in 1889.

In 1890, William Cox left the teaching profession and took a job with the United Railway Postal Service which provided him with enough income to purchase 160 acres of land. Throughout the next several years, the Coxes continued to purchase land and add to their assets and wealth. At the time, they were among the state’s wealthiest African Americans and moved into a home in the white section of town becaming active in the community. William Cox was a city alderman and the chair of the county’s Republican organization. 

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Minnie M. Cox (samepassage.org)

Reconstruction Policies

Post-Civil War Reconstruction policies were in place in the late 1890s. These policies were designed to make it easier for African Americans to find work in the South, but the policies also supported the appointments of African Americans to certain political appointments. Today, we don’t really think of the post office as a political appointment, but the position of postmaster or postmistress was a lucrative public post at the time.

Postmistress Minnie Cox

It was perhaps partly due to these Reconstruction policies and partially to thank the Coxes for their continual political activity that Minnie Cox was first appointed to the position of postmistress of Indianola, Mississippi, in 1891 by then-President Benjamin Harrison. She was reappointed by President William McKinley when he took office, and again by President Theodore Roosevelt.

For her job as postmistress, Minnie Cox earned $1,100 per year, which was a lot of money at the turn of the 20th century. By all accounts, Minnie Cox excelled at her job. She was hard-working and dedicated and willing to put in long hours. She used her own money to have a telephone installed in the post office so residents of the town could call to see if they had mail waiting for them. She even covered the rental fees for post office boxes from some of the citizens of Indianola when they fell behind in paying them. For several years, no one in Indianola questioned the work she was doing, and she received very few complaints.