Despite state restrictions that effectively disenfranchised most blacks , Booze joined the Republican Party . Beginning in 1924 , she served as a committeewoman from Mississippi to the Republican National Committee , the first African-American woman who hold that position . She became a subject of innuendo in fierce state politics during the 1928 presidential campaign that year . Governor Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi , a populist Democrat and supporter of his party 's nominee , Governor Al Smith of New York , claimed that the Republican candidate , Herbert Hoover , had danced with Booze in Mississippi ; Bilbo described her as a " negress . " The rendezvous had supposedly occurred at Mound Bayou the previous year , when 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 , described Bilbo 's remark as " the most indecent and unworthy statement in the whole of a bitter campaign . " ( Hoover appointed Akerson in 1929 as the first official White House press secretary . He noted too that the all-Democratic Mississippi State Legislature had highly commended Hoover 's work in flood relief , which devastated hundreds of thousands of acres in the Delta . '' The Shreveport Times '' of Louisiana ran a photograph of sixteen Republican national committeewomen , including Booze , under the heading " GOP for Racial , Social Equality " . Democratic 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 , criticized Smith as a candidate , noting there was racial intermarriage in New York . Others opposed him because he was Roman Catholic
Great Mississippi Flood of 1927
Great Mississippi Flood of 1927
Mary Booze