Mary McClure Hutchinson Martin

Nationally, The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 sanctioned the entrance of 205,000 immigrants into the United States over a two-year period.1 Though over 200,000 visas were available to displaced persons, much of the Jewish population were ineligible because they entered Germany, Austria, Italy, and Czechoslovakia after December 22, 1945.2 The bill was deemed discriminatory by President Harry S. Truman, and even though he signed the bill into law, he made his disapproval known.3  It look Congress two years, but an amendment was added to include nearly 99,000 more visas for displaced persons.4

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Locally, in 1949, only 961 displaced persons were known to have immigrated to Mississippi. In 1949 a study conducted at Louisiana State University, Rudolt Herbele and Dudley S. Hall found that no one in Lowndes or the three adjacent counties of Clay, Monroe, and Oktibbeha had accepted or sponsored displaced persons.5 In fact, however, Mary Hutchinson started sponsoring displaced persons from Europe in 1949. Given the low number of immigrants and the Herbele and Hall study of sponsorship, it is plausible that Mary Hutchinson was the first person in her area to take on this type of humanitarian work.

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