Mary Booze

Mary Cordelia Montgomery Booze
Born	1877 Place of birth missing
Died	1948
Residence	Mound Bayou, Bolivar County Mississippi, USA
Alma mater	Straight University
Occupation	Businesswoman Instructor, Mound Bayou Normal Institute
Known for	First African-American woman to sit on the Republican National Committee
Spouse(s)	Eugene P. Booze (married 1901-1939, his death)
Children	Two children
Parent(s)	Mr. and Mrs. Isaiah T. Montgomery

Mary Cordelia Montgomery Booze (1877–1948), a daughter of former slaves, was the first African-American woman to sit on the Republican National Committee. From 1924 until her death, she was the national committeewoman for her native state of Mississippi.

Biography

Booze's father, Isaiah T. Montgomery (1847-1924), was a cotton producer politically allied with the famous Republican educator Booker T. Washington. In 1887, the Montgomerys moved to Bolivar County south of Clarksdale in the rich delta country of northwestern Mississippi. There Montgomery founded an all-black agricultural community, Mound Bayou, located on the Mississippi River. Mary studied for two years at the historically black Straight University in New Orleans, Louisiana, and then worked as a bookkeeper for the family business. She also taught at the teacher-training Mound Bayou Normal Institute. In 1901, she married Eugene P. Booze, who thereafter entered into a business partnership with his father-in-law. The Boozes had two children.^[1]

During the 1928 presidential election, Governor Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, a supporter of the Democratic nominee Governor Al Smith of New York, claimed that the Republican candidate, Herbert Hoover, had danced with Booze,^[2] whom Bilbo called a "negress." The supposed rendezvous had occurred at Mound Bayou while Hoover, as the United States Secretary of Commerce, was in Mississippi inspecting damage from the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. George E. Akerson, a journalist who under Hoover became in 1929 the first official White House press secretary, described Bilbo's remark as "the most indecent and unworthy statement in the whole of a bitter campaign." He noted too that the all-Democratic Mississippi State Legislature had commended Hoover's work in flood relief.^[3] The Shreveport Times, the morning newspaper in Shreveport, Louisiana, ran a photograph of sixteen Republican national committeewomen, including Booze, under the heading "GOP for Racial, Social Equality".^[4] U.S. Representative James B. Aswell of Louisiana's 8th congressional district, since disbanded, speaking on KWKH radio in Shreveport, criticized Hoover's support for desegregation of the American South. Hoover's southern supporters, most of them business-oriented Democrats, pointed to racial intermarriage in Smith's New York.^[5][6]

Whether Bilbo's story about Hoover, Booze, and the dance was accurate, Hoover polled only 17.8 percent of the vote in Mississippi, his second worst showing in the election, exceeded only by South Carolina, which gave the Republican nominee only 8.5 percent of the ballots cast. Even in Alabama due east of Mississippi, Hoover finished with an impressive 48.5 percent of the ballots.^[7]

Mary's sister, Estelle Montgomery, quarreled with her brother-in-law, Eugene, over the disposal of Isaiah's family property. During a violent confrontation in 1939, Eugene called in state troopers, who shot and killed Estelle. Eugene himself was thereafter shot and killed. The case was never solved.^[8][9] After Eugene's murder, Mary relocated to New York City but continued to hold the post of Mississippi Republican national committeewoman. The state party was controlled at the time by the Black and Tan bi-racial faction, led by the long-term national committeeman Perry Wilbon Howard of Jackson, Mississippi, and Washington, D.C., with the rival Lily whites in the minority at that time.^[1]

References