When the United States entered World War I in 1917, it was poorly prepared for the challenges ahead. Training a large army required military camps with adequate housing and supplies. To address this need, President Woodrow Wilson commissioned Army General John J. Pershing, Commander of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), to construct thirty training camps and cantonments across the country, including Camp Shelby.
Okolona Industrial School was founded by Wallace Aaron Battle in 1902, citing the size of Mississippi’s Black population and the high rate of illiteracy as the catalysts for his decision. The school was located in northeastern Mississippi and provided industrial and teacher training for Black residents of the state. Battle structured the school after Booker T. Washington’s curriculum at the Tuskegee Institute.
In January 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt refused to accept the resignation of Minnie Geddings Cox, postmistress for the city of Indianola and Mississippi’s first African American postmistress. Roosevelt subsequently closed Indianola’s post office, and it remained closed for more than a year. The newspapers called the incident the “Indianola Affair.” Raised by business owner parents and educated at one of the premier schools for aspiring African American women, Cox sought opportunities beyond the traditional expectations for women of the time.
In January 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt refused to accept the resignation of Minnie Geddings Cox, postmistress for the city of Indianola and Mississippi’s first African American postmistress. Roosevelt subsequently closed Indianola’s post office, and it remained closed for more than a year. The newspapers referred to the post office closing as the “Indianola Affair.” Cox’s role in the Indianola Affair, however, has been reduced to a footnote in early twentieth-century United States history.
On December 28, 1894, Burnita Shelton Matthews was born into an educated, civic-minded family, in Copiah County, Mississippi. Although she aspired from a very young age to pursue a legal career, her father insisted that she pursue the study and teaching of music which he believed was a more ladylike profession. Following her marriage to Percy A. Matthews, she taught music for a short while in Georgia before moving to Washington, D.C. to accept a job with the Veterans Administration. She strategically chose to live and work in Washington, D.C.