Nathan Andrew McDonald: —to the doctor almost every week, and the doctor couldn't find out what was wrong with me. And I would be sick. Sick, sick, sick, sick as a dog. And one lady came up to the house, I think it was probably right around the latter part of August. And she looked at me and she told my mother, she says, "Lavinia, I know what's wrong with it." And mama said, "What?" She said, "Worms." Mama said, "I don't believe that." She said, "Yes it is." And she says, "I'm going out to Miss Fox's house and get some gorge seeds." You know what a gorge is, don't you? And she says, "I'll be back in a few minutes." And she came back and she got some gorge seeds and they put them in the oven and parched them. Then they crumbled them oven and put some Louisiana molasses on it and gave me a tablespoon full, and didn't have no more problems out of me after that. 

Nathan Andrew McDonald: Now that's the only home remedy that I can remember. And my mother said at the time, she had gone to the doctor so many times and there was nothing seemed to work. So she was at wits end and she said she was willing to try anything. And the lady told her that she diagnosed the case by looking at me and says, "That's what it is," and it got rid of. Now I remember at a certain time, folk would say what turpentine and little sugar was good for this, that and the other. I didn't believe in that. And folk would talk about a spring tonic in the springtime. My mother said, "If you need a spring tonic," she said, "I can give you prunes and that'll do the same job." 

Nathan Andrew McDonald: Well my mother, the thing was if my mother tried to get away, some of those things, some of the things, because when I recall once in school I read Mules and Men and I took it home by Zora Neale Hurston, and I took it home and I started asking my mother in the back of the book, there are certain remedies and things like that. And no sooner than I started reading it out to her, she'd finish the line. And I said, "Well, mama, why haven't you told us?" And she said, "I don't pay no attention to all that myths those folk kept up back in those days." She said a lot of it probably would have had a little truth in it, and a lot of it didn't just, and she said, "If you believe in it may work, but if you don't believe in it won't work," and all that kind of stuff. 

Doris Dixon: Are you're reading this when you were in school? What level? 

Nathan Andrew McDonald: I think I was in college, probably a freshman and sophomore year in college. I have a— 

Doris Dixon: Mid to early sixties? 

Nathan Andrew McDonald: Yeah, it was about '66. 

Doris Dixon: Okay. 

Nathan Andrew McDonald: And I ran across the book there, and well, I had had a course in humanities. And at that time James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time was very popular and that was one of the required reading. And in fact I went to Mayor Homes College first and it was small Presbyterian school. And the reason I went there was 'cause one of the local ministers, since we only had worship service once a month, well, each Sunday we would go to different churches, and of course the second Sunday we would go to the Presbyterian church since they only had five members and to make a congregation. 

Nathan Andrew McDonald: And the minister was very articulate. In fact, he came there as a missionary and he had been there for a number of years before they installed him as a minister because he said he never fulfilled the requirements for being a minister I reckon. But anyway, he had those really courses. They eventually, the Board of National Missions, installed him as a minister in '66, but he was there ever since I could remember. 

Nathan Andrew McDonald: And so a lot of times he would say he went up to Mary Holmes to do certain things and I got interested in Mary Holmes College. My father didn't want me to go, he wanted me to go to Jackson State. That was the only school, he thought the sun rose in set in Jackson State. And I said I didn't want to go. Well, I had opportunity to go on Jackson's campus and a number of times when I was in high school I sang in high school choir where the state sun festivals at on Jackson's campus every year. So that was four years that I had a chance to run around and see what was going on there. So I wanted to try a smaller school. 

Nathan Andrew McDonald: So anyway, we had a course in humanities and the instructor required us to do a lot of reading from a variety of sources. And of course, heavily on Black. And in fact I read quite a few books of James Baldwin. And then I started with some of Langston Hughes and then I happened to catch Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men. And when I carried it home at those days, those times the semester would end in January rather than in December. So I had two weeks to sort of brush up on my studies during that period, those two weeks. And I carried the book home and we set out round the fire talking and reading. 

Doris Dixon: And this was in Mary Holmes College? 

Nathan Andrew McDonald: Yeah. 

Doris Dixon: Is that a phenomenally [indistinct 00:05:47]? 

Nathan Andrew McDonald: Uh-huh. It was a junior college up at West Point, Mississippi. During the civil right movement, people stayed on the campus there because it was a private school since it was owned and operated by the Board of National Missions in New York. And those people, the Mennonites and a lot of civil rights workers, would stay on the campus during the summer because they were burning a lot of churches down there. And the White people would, I presume that they were the members of the organization, but they would trail them to the gate of the campus and that was as far as they could go. That was a road on one edge of the campus that would go to a golf course. 

Nathan Andrew McDonald: I think this several years before I went to school, they sold part of the property and the people built a golf course. But sometime I wondered were they actually going to the golf course or that was just a means of saying, "Well, we are not trailing you. We are going to the golf course," but somebody would be there waiting on them anyway. Some civil rights workers stayed there on campus during the summer. And then some Mennonites came down from Minnesota to rebuild some of the churches. And we had a chance to become friends with them. And some of them were students at some of the schools because in some of the [indistinct 00:07:23] services, they would come in and sing the songs along with, and some of them were bar bronze and paid over and sing right along. Anything else?