Waco History Podcast

An annual tradition for many students and teachers is looking for summer employment. During the 1940s, these jobs were becoming easier to find, with a recovering American economy and the war overseas. Jane Martin, former missionary in East Africa, lists a few of the summer jobs that she held in the 1940s to pay her way through Mars Hill College in North Carolina: "I worked for the government at the Department of Interior, and I worked for the Department of Navy." Interviewer: "In Washington, DC, those things are possible." "You know, but you don't say that I—you were sorting mail and things like that. (both laugh) You weren't—yes. I worked one summer for a community program for underprivileged children. I worked for a department store, but I wasn't working in the store; I was in the warehouse. And to my amazement, they came to me one day, and I thought, Oh my, have I done something wrong? They said, Come with us. We want to talk to you about something. And they put me on the loading dock, as a fourteen-year-o