Mary’s first job after completing school was working as a math teacher at an all-Black school in Calvert County, Maryland.She later married her husband Levi Jackson. When Mary returned home she got another job as a receptionist at the King Street USO Club that helped serve the city’s Black population. After working as a receptionist she became a bookkeeper at the Hampton Institute’s health department. Shortly after these two jobs Mary did have to take a short break and become a stay at home mother for her son Levi Jackson Jr. Once she was able to stop being a stay at home mother and got back into the workforce, she was an Army secretary at Fort Monroe. Mary Jackson started working for the Laboratory’s Segregated West Area Computing Section in 1951. In the work facility that Mary worked at everything was separated between colored and white. The cafeteria was set up to where any colored employees had to place their orders and eat it at their desks not in the cafe where everybody else ate at. After several months of separate and unequal accommodations Mary had enough and wanted to resign but her plans to resign changed when she had an encounter with her