Minnie Cox, was the United States, first Black female postmaster. In 1891, during the administration of President Benjamin Harrison, she was appointed postmaster of Indianola, MS. Minnie 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. When Cox's appointment expired in 1904, the Indianola post office reopened with a different postmaster.
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. When Minnie Cox served as postmaster, the position could only be appointed by the president. When President Benjamin Harrison appointed her in 1891, her prominence in the community and support of the Republican Party secured her first term. In 1892 President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, chose Mrs. D.J Treadwell, a White woman, to replace Cox.
Cox again assumed the position under President William McKinley and remained in the role under President Theodore Roosevelt. Though she was praised for her work in streamlining the mail system for the community, she took her position much further, installing a telephone for patrons' convenience (so that they can check to see if they had mail) and paying delinquent rent throughout the community out of her own pocket. In the fall of 1902, James K. Vardaman, the White supremacist editor of the Greenwood Commonwealth, made Cox’s tenure as postmaster a political issue.
Even before he was elected governor of Mississippi in 1904, he demanded that President Roosevelt fire Cox. Roosevelt refused to accept her resignation and ordered that mail service to Indianola be halted until its citizens relented and allowed her back on the job. The president also ordered Philander Chase Knox, the U.S. attorney general, to prosecute Indianola citizens who had threatened violence against Cox. Meanwhile, the White townspeople of Indianola held meetings calling on Cox to resign on January 1, 1903, a full year before her commission as postmaster ended.
She refused to step down prior the end of term, but she made it known that she would not be candidate for reappointment. The president closed the Indianola post office on January 2, 1903, and declared it would remain closed until the White citizens of Indianola accepted Cox as postmaster. They did not, and the post office remained closed until Cox’s term expired on January 1, 1904. President Roosevelt appointed William Martin, a friend of Cox, as the new postmaster.