Martha Alice Ingham Dickie, class of 1926 - First Interview
Martha Alice Ingham Dickie was born in Providence on April 25, 1905. She was brought up by her aunt and uncle, the Dickies, in a very religious family that belonged to the First Baptist Church in Providence. After attending Hope Street High School, she received a scholarship to Pembroke, where she specialized in languages and fine art. Upon her graduation from Pembroke College in 1926, she attended Northwestern University in Chicago at the Hull House, studying to become a social worker.
Martha Alice Ingham Dickie begins her 1985 interview discussing both her religious and academic backgrounds, elaborating on her interests in social work and international politics. These religious and intellectual values converged in 1939, when Czechoslovakia was being threatened by the Nazis and the Unitarian Churches there had been occupied. As part of the American Relief for Czechoslovakia program, Dickie and her husband traveled to Czechoslovakia to help the refugees. The majority of the interview focuses on her life in the course of World War II, during which she smuggled hundreds of refugees out of Czechoslovakia and France and into London and the United States - while raising money, organizing relief teams, and providing food and aid to refugees under Nazi occupation. Martha reflects on the emotional experiences of this time, while considering the process of bringing people to safety.