Mabel and David Hoggard oral history interview: audio clip

Mabel Hoggard discusses how she came to live in Las Vegas and her employment history. She was on her way to Los Angeles and stopped in Las Vegas to visit relatives in 1944. She was offered a job as a secretary at the USO (United Service Organizations) and her relatives persuaded her to stay and live in Las Vegas with them instead of moving to California like she had planned. After working for the USO from 1944 to 1946 she applied to be a teacher. She had been a teacher before but lost her job because she refused to contribute part of her salary to a campaign fund. She faced some racially-based opposition when she first started teaching in Las Vegas but Maude Frazier advocated for her and the members of the school board renewed her contract after her first year, and she said she didn't "have any trouble" after that first year.