Nathan McDonald interview recording, 1995 August 07

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Doris Dixon	—County in the Delta area. It's for the end of the—Could you please state your full name and date of birth?	0:01
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Nathan Andrew Jackson McDonald. October 6th, 1945.	0:11
Doris Dixon	And where were you born?	0:22
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Place of birth, Washington, DC.	0:23
Doris Dixon	And Mr. McDonald, were you raised in Washington?	0:32
Nathan Andrew McDonald	No, I was not. I was raised here in Mississippi. Came down in the year 1949. An aunt and uncle adopted my older sister and I.	0:32
Doris Dixon	What part of Mississippi?	0:46
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Central Mississippi near Kosciusko. A little town called Ethel, Mississippi.	0:48
Doris Dixon	Was that where you were raised, Ethel, Mississippi? Or near Ethel, Mississippi?	0:56
Nathan Andrew McDonald	In Ethel.	0:59
Doris Dixon	In Ethel.	0:59
Nathan Andrew McDonald	And went to high school in Kosciusko.	1:01
Doris Dixon	What are some of your earliest memories of early life growing up in Ethel?	1:09
Nathan Andrew McDonald	It was a small sawmill town. And the majority of the workers, those that were not farmers, worked at the sawmill. However, my father was an auto mechanic, so there was one Chevrolet dealer in that little small town. And of course, she was reared just outside of the city limits, so she had property there and she just remained there for a number of years and operated her dealership, and my father was a mechanic there.	1:16
Nathan Andrew McDonald	The things that I remember vividly were the people at the sawmill got paid twice a month and most of them that did not manage their money well, at the end of the first week, they were flat broke until that. That was one thing that I noticed about some of the people. They were barely getting—I don't think they were getting a dollar an hour at that time, and it was pretty difficult for some of them. And some of them supplemented by doing odd jobs in various places. Because back in those days, sodas were a nickel and the little theater there that they had for a small period of time until the civil rights movement moved into high gear, a show was 10 cent and things of that nature. Seems to be very cheap in those days.	1:54
Nathan Andrew McDonald	As far as schooling is concerned, I lived right in front of the little schoolhouse there. And when I was five, I would go out and play with the children at recess. They had a small cafeteria there and had a very good cook, as I remember vividly, because the guys from the local sawmill, when they found out that Ms. Sophia Gregory would have soup or a stew, they would be there after all of the kids would eat so that they could buy some.	3:00
Nathan Andrew McDonald	But at first grade, the county cut the cafeteria out. I do remember that they refused to bring the milk for the cafeteria to the school. They would drop it off at a paved road. There was a dirt road that'd come up to where we lived and the schoolhouse. They wouldn't bring it to the schoolhouse. So consequently in the wintertime, it would be okay. Some kids would go down and pick the milk up and bring it to the school. But on the warm days and the spring and fall, they had to be there early to make sure that the milk wouldn't spoil.	3:35
Nathan Andrew McDonald	The cafeteria was closed, so consequently, the school was downsized as far as teachers was concerned. In one room, this teacher that when I was in first grade, had four grades, one through four, and the principal had five through eight. The county wouldn't provide a high school. So consequently, if you remained in Ethel, you didn't go to school. Otherwise, you had to get someone to let you stay in Kosciusko in order to complete your education, or either try to drive or get someone to take you in what was a county school about five miles away to the Greenlee community. And they had a high school there.	4:10
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Books were few. We never got new books. You could always tell by the names in the books that it came from the White school.	5:00
Nathan Andrew McDonald	My mother and other patrons of the community, as far as PTA is concerned, would put on—For instance, if school would open, they would put on plate suppers and things in order to repair the windows. The county would provide the teachers and the coal, but the PTA paid the utility bill. You could sit around the heater during those cold days and look out the window or look through some cracks and see the outside. That's just how conditions were in those days.	5:14
Nathan Andrew McDonald	We enjoyed those days. And when the school system moved to—Well, when they finally closed that school because they said that they couldn't afford to provide a school in Ethel, and so we had to go five miles to that school where the high school was located, our parents argued to the fact that why couldn't we go to the Ethel high school, Ethel school for White. That would seem strange for them to bus us out of the city limits to five miles away. Well, that was the first notion that I had of integration. But the county would not hear of it.	5:56
Nathan Andrew McDonald	One reason, I thought maybe that when I was a kid, that the state auditor, who's still living, one particular instance when they would come in and check and see how many students that you had present that day, she would deliberately come during the noon hour. Well, since we lived in a small community, those kids who walked a great distance would bring bagged lunches. But on the hill, there was no point in us bringing bagged lunches. We'd run to the house because we had an hour. And she would come at the twelve o'clock hour and count only those students that were there. And I remember the principal, I was out there playing because I had eaten my lunch, and he said, "Ms. Marsha, would you wait till one o'clock so that you could count all of the students?" She said, "Well, these are all that you have." And he says, "Ma'am, they're gone to lunch." And she said, "You're a flatfoot liar."	6:46
Nathan Andrew McDonald	So we went to the Greenlee community school for about three years, and I was eighth grade then and the county could no longer support that school, so they bused us to—They combined all of those schools from about the end of the county to Choctaw County to Kosciusko. Consequently, some people had to get up at four o'clock in the morning to ride a bus in order to get to school. I was fortunate enough to, if I missed one bus, I could walk to the road, which was three-quarters of a mile to catch the bus there in order to go to high school.	7:47
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Sometimes the buses would not come on time. Sometimes they would be late, sometime they would be early. I would always try to be ready between 6:30 and 7:00. And if it came at a quarter of 7:00 and I wasn't ready, I could catch the second bus. Then we had to go to Kosciusko, and that's where I finished high school.	8:25
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Now, the buildings at the Ethel school were very poor, and you had those—I'm digressing now. Those were cold heaters. Students had to make the fire. And in those cold days, you didn't have too many students that would walk those distances to sit around a cold heater. Sometimes we would have to sit up and warm our backside. I mean, sit in front of it. And then when it was so cold, you had to turn around and warm your backside and then go back to your seat. Any questions so far?	8:49
Doris Dixon	No.	9:29
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Okay. And a comparison of those school—That's the school that was for White. I always, when I was a kid, would see—There were five or six buildings there. Why did they have those buildings? A gymnasium, a library, which was a separate building, the grammar school, and a high school, and a football field. We had none of those facilities. We played basketball by drawing a diamond out on the road on the parking area out there for the school. We played baseball and whatever we had there.	9:30
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Kids would—Well, we had split session in the county, but not where we were in the other end of the county, like Sallis, where the predominant population of those people were farmers. And we did not have split session, but they had them on that end. But we should've had it because a lot of our children would stay out in the fall, like September and October and up until almost Thanksgiving, to pick cotton so that they could buy clothing for school.	10:13
Nathan Andrew McDonald	I had the opportunity to pick cotton a little bit. My parents always said that, "We would give you the opportunity to get that experience, but no more than a week or so." So consequently, we didn't stay out of school that much, which was—I'm grateful that we didn't.	10:52
Nathan Andrew McDonald	By my father being an auto mechanic, and as far as the working conditions there, when I got up some size, I would go down to the shop and work with him. Now, my first job, I had a paper route, as I would say. It wasn't very successful in that people didn't want to pay. They'd get the paper, but they didn't want to pay for it. The next job was mowing lawns. And the same problem there. I wasn't able to drive, or at least I wasn't old enough to drive. Consequently, my mother had to carry me around in the car and she would charge me for chauffeuring. So the fee for mowing the yard, keeping up the lawn mowing, paying my mother, then I didn't have any money to spend, so I quit that job. And the next job, since daddy saw that I liked to watch him work on the cars, so he started teaching me something. So those are the only jobs I had up until I started actually working, because I would always go down to the shop with him when school was out.	11:11
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Now, he tried his hand at farming and he wasn't successful in that. He tried cotton. This was before we were able to pick cotton, and he didn't make any money out of it. My mother showed him, said, "Now you have to hire people to do the plowing and the planting. And if you figure all of that out, you're not making anything." And since he was an auto mechanic and didn't have the time, he stopped that part of trying to farm.	12:28
Nathan Andrew McDonald	We did raise our own hogs and we raised corn. So we had a mule and he would raise hogs. Those hogs that he didn't want to keep, he would sell them. And he had the mule there for me to plow and see after the corn. And we gathered the corn in the fall to feed the chickens and the hogs and things. Let me see. Anything else so far?	13:00
Doris Dixon	You mentioned they closed the school at Ethel.	13:38
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Yes.	13:46
Doris Dixon	What effect did that have? How did people take that?	13:46
Nathan Andrew McDonald	They had no choice. The only thing was—See, we questioned the superintendent at that time, why would they close the school and merge it with the county Colored school, which was five miles away. Why couldn't we go to the school that was there in Ethel for White? And their main issue, what if something would happen to a student that was five miles away. They're not close to—We did have one doctor there in Ethel. They brought that before them, but that was the choice there, that they couldn't afford to maintain that school because there were not enough students. But I just believed that because from the auditor's report. But now the number of students that were on roll, it was accommodating those students there in town, those that wanted to go to school. You had some kids that just wouldn't go to school anyway.	13:46
Doris Dixon	Now, did you say—You mentioned the school hadn't been downsized. Was there a declining population in Ethel?	14:55
Nathan Andrew McDonald	No. When I was five, they had three teachers. And my first grade year, they combined them. They let one teacher go. They still had the same amount of students.	15:03
Doris Dixon	Okay.	15:14
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Because for, I think, the first year, the year before I started school, they had only three students in the eighth grade and they didn't go to high school. And that following year, there were 12 of us in the first grade. So it appears to me that they had about the same number of students.	15:15
Nathan Andrew McDonald	And with all of us going to the county school in the Greenlee community, you had at least about a dozen teachers. And each teacher had two grades, fifth and the one—When I started there, we had fifth and sixth grade in one room. The next teacher had seventh and eighth grade. And they had four teachers for the high school. One taught English, one taught science, one taught math, and whatever other courses they would need would alternate those.	15:48
Nathan Andrew McDonald	They did have a cafeteria. Ms. Verner used to cook very good lunches. Those students who were too poor to pay for lunches, we could very well say what we were going to have for lunch. If a student had a big burlap sack of turnip greens on the bus, well, we were going to have greens that day, we knew that. And a lot of them would bring vegetables to school in order to defray the cost of the meal.	16:22
Nathan Andrew McDonald	The lunches were 10 cent. And there were times that I didn't have the 10 cent, and then I would tell the cafeteria person, "I don't have it. I'm hungry. May I eat today?" And they'd say, "Yeah, I know your parents. They'll pay for it." And of course, I always would tell my parents, "I spent my lunch money for some candy and I got hungry." And they would call us, send the money up there.	16:58
Nathan Andrew McDonald	There were two buildings there. And Mr. Greenlee had donated the school property to the church, and they used the church as part of the school. And of course, when the county decided to build a school, they wouldn't build it on that property, simply because it was donated and it still belonged to the church. Consequently, they built an elementary school when I was 11th grade. They built it near the town where I grew up. And eventually, they did add a high school to it just before integration. But I was teaching school then.	17:28
Doris Dixon	I'd be interested—Can you tell us more about the PTA and the selling of dinners to repair the windows [indistinct 00:18:29]?	18:24
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Okay. Okay. They would have, for example, boxed lunches. I mean, suppers. You'd come in and they would sell a plate. And sometimes they would have a cakewalk along with it. And you know how they operate on you, where they put numbers around on a square and then they'd start some music and they would stop the music and pull a number out of a hat and whatever number it was, if someone was standing on it, they got a cake. All right? And then they had a heaven and hell party.	18:31
Doris Dixon	What is that?	19:24
Nathan Andrew McDonald	They would put a sheet up on the stage and—Well, they would section it off. You would come in and you would purchase a ticket. And if the ticket said you go to heaven, you would go and they would serve you ice cream. And if it said, "Hell," they would serve you a stew, but it would be filled with pepper. Something to make it hot. And I had an aunt who refused—Well, it was my father's sister, who refused to buy a ticket, but she would donate and she just wanted to taste the stew. As I always say, she was sort of a hellcat herself, so she didn't want to—	19:25
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Okay. The funds would be—For example, across the summer, kids would come by and throw rocks and knock the window panes out. And as soon as they—For instance, like in August, we're getting ready to start up school in September, some of the ladies in the PTA would say, "Okay, it's time to get some window panes put in," and they get some of the men to put them in. And some of them would even—If the windows were too shabby to replace, then they would buy a whole window and put in that. And there was those tall windows.	20:16
Nathan Andrew McDonald	And for Christmas, they would have a Christmas party or something of that nature in order to keep some money in a treasure to do certain things. When somebody's house would burn in the local community, well, no sooner than the house started burning, the sawmill would blow the whistle boo boo boo and then we knew everybody would run out and look, see which way the smoke was. And of course, the PTA, they would have something for people to donate and bring for that particular family. Let me see what else I can remember.	20:57
Doris Dixon	Who were the leaders? Who was involved in the [indistinct 00:21:47]?	21:43
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Well, you see, just those people who were on the hill. That was my mother. Her name was Lavinia McDonald. There was Ms. Mary Landingham. She stayed a few doors from us. And Ms. Hattie Mae Fondren. She had about six or seven children. There was Ms. Irene Austin, and she was very instrumental. She worked diligently. And let's see, who else? Mrs. Sweetie Beck, and Mrs. Vivian Cooper, and Mrs. Martha Ann Ashwood, and Mrs. Mary Smith, and Ms. Annie Kay Kennedy, and Ms. Cloteal Esthers. Now, those were some of the ladies there on the hill that would work. And of course, Mrs—Can't even think of the woman. Laura Lou Austin. Now, Laura Lou Austin and Irene Austin, they married brothers. Willie Dee and—Can't even think of his name. But now they worked at the sawmills, but they could do carpentry work and they would come and do some of the carpentry work.	21:50
Doris Dixon	The hill?	23:20
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Okay, the hill. The sawmill—Well, it's a little hill town. And the sawmill was sort of in a flat area there. It was on part of the church property. We were not able to have services—Only on Sundays, because the sawmill worked six days a week. And we wanted to get away from it, so the sawmill bought the church property, but they moved it up where the school was after the school was closed. But there was a hill coming from the sawmill, and we just said all of the folk that lived on the hill.	23:20
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Now, to separate, the train ran right between both hills. Consequently so, on the other side of the track, there was a hill over there and it had what they call a quarter. About a dozen houses belonged to the sawmill. And those were some of the workers there who didn't have a place to stay. Okay.	23:58
Nathan Andrew McDonald	My daddy's sister ran a cafe and Mrs. Ashford ran a cafe. And of course, on a Friday and Saturday and Sunday night, people would alternate cafes to see what was happening at each one of them. And of course, they had to walk. Sometime they would pass through our yards when it was too muddy. There were no sidewalks nowhere and no paved roads either. So you could get a gist of what was going on if you just listened, because people would be talking about what's going on, this, that, and the other. And they would alternate the little joints.	24:25
Doris Dixon	So you're saying your family was on one hill. There was a group of Black families on one hill.	25:10
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Right, mm-hmm.	25:10
Doris Dixon	And there was a train track, and then there was a quarter on another hill?	25:10
Nathan Andrew McDonald	On the other side of that track, right.	25:12
Doris Dixon	Were there much interaction between the two hills?	25:14
Nathan Andrew McDonald	There was no separation, just the track. People, they visited each other. There was no separation.	25:18
Doris Dixon	No?	25:22
Nathan Andrew McDonald	We all worked together there, mm-hmm.	25:22
Doris Dixon	Growing up there, were there certain community stories, certain legends within the Black community there, I don't know, something that everybody knew, everybody heard, kind of grew up steeped in that legend?	25:26
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Excuse me. Not that I know of. Mm-mm. The only thing that scared me was about a person dying. And my mother told me that the person died on our porch. I jumped off the porch you mean? On this one? Yes. And she said, "There's nothing to fear." So I said, "Sure enough." And she said, "Well, now, Hammond is afraid of dead folk." And I said, "Is he?" And she said, "Yeah, do you ever see him go to a funeral?" I said, "Come to think of it—" I was small then. From then on, I realized that he had nothing to do with dead people.	25:46
Nathan Andrew McDonald	And in fact, the only funeral that I remember him going to was one of his sister's funeral. And he wouldn't have gone then, but some nieces came down from Memphis and they were all sitting on the porch and the body was there in the church. And when they got ready to go, they just reached and grabbed him. But even at my mother's funeral, he sat outside in the pickup. He didn't go inside. And when his twin sister passed away, she got me up that morning because he was going to feed the pigs, so she said, "Nathan, get up and put your clothes on and get ready to go down to Kosciusko." I said, "What for?" She said, "Hammond will tell you when you—" I said, "Well, what did he say?" She said, "He didn't say anything, but I know he's going to want to go."	26:45
Nathan Andrew McDonald	So I went to the mortician's house and asked him to open up the funeral home. He said the door was open. I said, "Well, what he doing over—" He says, "Nobody's going in there to get anything." So I opened the door and started in the back. And when I looked at it, didn't go no farther than the door, he said, "Let's go." I said, "You didn't see her." "Let's go." And that was it. So I realized then that when she said that it was nothing for me to be afraid of when I said that that man died on the porch there, and she said, "Well, Hammond don't have any problems about coming by the porch. Why should you? Even though he's afraid of dead people."	27:33
Nathan Andrew McDonald	They talked about some of the people who used to live in the community. That's basically what the people talked about in those days. When I was a kid, they would talk little stories about what those people did and how they act and all that. But nothing of legend or anything to reminisce or to think about.	28:14
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Because the only thing that I remember, that—I was in high school and the James Meredith incident was in—I think I was, what, 10th or 11th grade. And of course, Mrs. Meredith worked in the school cafeteria. And the sister, Willie Lou, was in the class ahead of me. And one of the brothers had already graduated. So the thought of James enrolling in Ole Miss, but—To look at the police cars constantly going up and down the streets for no reason at all, that's what bugged me. Why should they continue to go up and down the streets? When I was ninth grade, you didn't see one. Maybe one once a day or something. And I figured they had no business going up and down the streets, but they was just doing that.	28:36
Nathan Andrew McDonald	And of course, it was pretty taxing, I can imagine, on Mrs. Meredith, listening to the news and see what was going on and coming to do her job, because she was the pastry cook. She could make some very good peach pies and apple pies and things for the school.	29:35
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Then after that was over, then there was nothing to—Well, when I became a senior, she was still working there, but I didn't think no more about it. He was in school and everything was all well and done with. And then the next thing, I hear that Willie Lou hung herself and I don't believe that she hung herself. I think it was somewhere along the lines—	29:53
Doris Dixon	Willie Lou was his sister?	30:20
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Yeah, his sister.	30:27
Doris Dixon	And it was alleged that she hung herself.	30:27
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Uh-huh. But I don't believe it. She didn't seem like to be the type. Of course you never know though.	30:27
Doris Dixon	You lived with your aunt and uncle?	30:37
Nathan Andrew McDonald	They adopted us. My parents had some of the kids, and of course they're still in Washington and Virginia, since my mother was from Virginia. And see, my father was from Mississippi, so all of my father's people were from Attala County and Holmes County. And my mother was from Virginia. That's near Charlottesville and Lynchburg, a little town called Scottsville. And of course, my uncles, they moved on to DC, and that's where some of the family members stay there now.	30:39
Doris Dixon	How far back did you decide can you trace, or have you traced? [indistinct 00:31:21].	31:15
Nathan Andrew McDonald	I can show you. I have it on paper.	31:23
Doris Dixon	Okay, okay.	31:26
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Okay. I can give you a copy of that, okay, and let you look at it. When I was small, I had an aunt. She was probably the oldest sister that was living then. And my sister and I would get mad at her because every little community that goes, she started inquiring about people. And we said, "There go Aunt Mary digging up relatives, digging up relatives." And of course, I wished I had sort of put some of that down on paper. And I've heard old people sit around and talk about certain things, but somewhere along the line, I have forgotten.	31:27
Nathan Andrew McDonald	And as much as I can—Not as much as I can put on paper, because a lot of stuff that I was told, I just wouldn't put it down there because certain things would cause an embarrassment to some of the family members now. Because like this one young lady, a distant cousin of mine, she wants to set the record straight about her grandmother. And there's a sister there, her aunt, who's a daughter of the grandmother, don't want it told. So I told her, I said, "Well, Shirley, well, one day, we'll get together and we'll just straighten this line out. But right now, since there's some ill feelings with Bernice, then we won't do anything about it."	32:09
Nathan Andrew McDonald	I try to keep pictures of all the family members as I can, every time we go to a family reunion. This year, it's scheduled in Waterloo, Iowa, and I don't think I'll make it. But anyway, we go meet people and eat [indistinct 00:33:16], party, and sometime if we can get them to go to worship service.	32:57
Doris Dixon	Do either your aunt and uncle or your parents, did they tell you of any of their stories about when they came up and the things that they had to go through?	33:24
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Yeah, mm-hmm. My mother had a time with staying with different sisters and brothers. Well, this is my aunt that reared me. In that she was her mother's youngest, and I think she probably died sometime thereafter she was born. Consequently, my father remarried and my mother didn't stay with that wife. She stayed with some of her sisters and brothers. So they practically raised her, along with her grandfather. I've heard her talk about her grandmother and grandfather. A great deal of—They were farmers and when grandmother wasn't farming, then she would fish. And she told me she never wanted to go fishing.	33:39
Nathan Andrew McDonald	And when we were kids, we wanted to go fishing, because a lot of—You hear children around you talking about what good time they had fishing, what good time they had swimming. My father never allowed us to go swimming, and I asked him why. He says, "I used to slip off and go swimming when I was a kid. And then when I found out how dangerous it was, I stopped it. And I don't want you down there." So I never had the opportunity to go swimming.	34:29
Nathan Andrew McDonald	And we did finally have the opportunity to go fishing, but mother got tired because she said, "I just don't like it. I had enough of it when I was a kid," and baiting the hook and sitting there and telling lies and listening to people tell lies. We weren't probably telling any. They would just listen to those old ones there. And sitting on the creek bank and pond, whatever. And another thing that they talked about was farming. How the family migrated back down here in the Delta.	34:56
Doris Dixon	From the hills?	35:36
Nathan Andrew McDonald	From the hills, uh-huh. Mr. Sandlin, he was a straw boss of some plantation over in Bolivar County. He eventually married one of my aunts. And he persuaded my grandfather to migrate over in the Delta, and he did. And of course, consequently, his daughters got married in various places. I think one of them was married here in Greenwood. Married a man by the name of Tom Fleming, who was a railroad man.	35:36
Nathan Andrew McDonald	My father married two or three people down that way. Because he never got a divorce, but back in those days, divorces didn't mean anything. If you lived on the plantation, you could jump the broom and that was it. And you moved to another plantation, start a family, and that was it too. So one of my sisters right now get mad when I tell her, I said, "I don't even think that our father was legally married." And she says, "Why?" I said, "He didn't get a divorce from those wives he had at Mississippi."	36:14
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Anyway, they moved back—They were not back, but they moved to Bolivar County to do sharecropping. Times were rough, but no sooner than they got down here, then the floods ran them back. And I think was this last flood of—Was it '29 or '28?	36:43
Doris Dixon	[indistinct 00:37:11].	37:09
Nathan Andrew McDonald	It was something like that. Excuse me. My sinus is acting up on me now. But anyway, they were not down here long and they moved back to the hills. And consequently, they stayed that time.	37:11
Doris Dixon	Were they farming up there? [indistinct 00:37:35].	37:30
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Yeah, they farmed in Holmes County. She stayed with an uncle, our great Uncle Dan, when she moved back. Uncle Dan ran a small store in the little community up in Holmes County near Goodman, and she lived a portion of her life with Uncle Dan. And she eventually got married to a man by the name of Roosevelt Culpeper in Holmes County. The marriage lasted, I don't know, maybe about 10 years. But anyway, he died and then she remarried back in 1940, and that was when she met the husband that I knew, who was Hammond McDonald. They were farmers back in that area, so she didn't talk too much about that.	37:37
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Uncle Crowley did farming work, but he was also a peddler of corn whiskey. Well, he made it, rather. And as I heard, a cousin, Annie's—Well, her husband state that when the old man is in good spirit, he can make some of the best corn whiskey in Holmes County. And Uncle Crowley was one to be reckoned with, because every third word that came out of his mouth was a fouling word. And I had the opportunity of meeting him, since he was my great-uncle. And he'd always ask me why was my name Jackson and his name was Williams. That's what started me to thinking then.	38:47
Nathan Andrew McDonald	But what happened was my grandfather was the oldest brother and Uncle Crowley was the youngest. My grandfather did something and moved across the Big Black River into Attala County and changed his name from Williams to Jackson. And we kept in contact with family members. Some family members, when they move and migrate, they lose contact with him. We kept in contact with him, and I could never explain to Crowley why my name was Jackson. And he'd always tell me, "I know your grandfather. Now, why is his name Jackson?" He never told me.	39:46
Nathan Andrew McDonald	He kept a derringer in his shirt pocket and prints that with a tobacco can. So if things didn't go his way, he would pull it out. In latter life, he was thrown by a horse and the leg swelled up on him. And his daughters took him to the hospital and the doctor said, "We're going to have to do surgery." And Uncle Crowley reached up in his pocket and got his tobacco can and he said a four-letter word, "I came into this world with two legs, and I'm leaving with two legs. Nobody's going to cut them off." So they put him out on hospital leave.	40:27
Doris Dixon	[indistinct 00:41:10].	41:07
Nathan Andrew McDonald	He died with them.	41:10
Doris Dixon	I mean your—	41:11
Nathan Andrew McDonald	No. Instead of gangrene, and he eventually died. But he was up in age. He had no business riding a horse though. But he was just a rough rider, I would say.	41:13
Nathan Andrew McDonald	He had a sister who worshiped him. In fact, he was the baby. She was older than he was. But everything that he said, she agreed with it. I don't care what happened. And when he died, one month to the day, she passed away. She refused to eat. And I remember once one of the nieces said, "Y'all better go by and see Lily because she's not going to live long." And one month to the day, she passed away, even though she was older than—I think they were in their 80s then. Really my thoughts are rambling now. Anything else you can think of?	41:26
Doris Dixon	No. Actually, no. Well, you mentioned the one doctor.	42:15
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Okay. Yeah.	42:16
Doris Dixon	Was he White or Black?	42:17
Nathan Andrew McDonald	He was White. Dr. McBride. I don't know whether Dr. McBride actually practiced medicine early in life or not, because I noticed his degrees were awarded to him later in life, say in his 40s or 50s. And he learned how to drive real late in life. And when he'd write, he had to take the pen and hold it with both hands. He was just that nervous. And my mother, when he would come, would guide the pen for him to write out whatever it was. "Just tell me how to spell it," and he'd help her. And he would laugh. He would enjoy talking to my mother.	42:19
Nathan Andrew McDonald	So my mother took me for him and I looked at him like a fool because what he was doing to me, and he was laughing and I got mad. And he told me, "Son, don't worry about it. A doctor won't laugh at you when you're dying." And I said, "I can't see what I look like. You ought to take something." He said, "Well, we're trained not to get involved with our patients. Help them as much as possible."	43:16
Nathan Andrew McDonald	He had a sister. He never married, and he had a sister who was named Talitha. She taught school until they retired. And they lived just inside of the city limits. He was so short, in the car, he had to peep through the steering wheel, not look over it.	43:43
Nathan Andrew McDonald	At a certain time of the day, people would realize that Dr. McBride was going to the office, so get out of the way. Because he didn't stop at the stop sign, he would just ease right on out in the road and go on. Well, before that time, he always rode his horse.	44:05
Nathan Andrew McDonald	And when he got to where he was incapacitated, then they couldn't get nobody to stay with him. No one wanted to go, especially White. So he called my mother one morning and asked us, said, "Lavinia, I'm down in health, as you know. Would you come over and help us?" And my mother says, "Now, Dr. McBride, I wouldn't mind coming over and helping you, but the thing is that Ms. Talitha likes all those cats, and I don't like cats where I'm working." He said, "Well, Lavinia, just get them out of the house. Make them stay out while you're here." So that's how she went over. She cleaned up the house and would cook them their meals and everything until they needed around the clock care. My mother said she couldn't do that.	44:22
Nathan Andrew McDonald	In fact, my mother, she worked in various places when we were young. She cooked at certain times, but she'd always tell the people if she was cooking, "Look, when my kids come home from school, I have to be there. So I don't wash, I don't iron, and I don't clean, I cook. This is all that I do. So I'll clean up the kitchen after everything is over."	45:28
Nathan Andrew McDonald	But anyway, she worked for Dr. McBride until they had to go to the nursing home. So they were very thoughtful. They gave mother the car in their will. And of course, the niece came from Birmingham and took over everything else. And they were very good. They got another doctor there, but I really think that he was operating without a license, because he didn't stay there long.	45:51
Doris Dixon	Besides Dr. McBride, what did people do when they got sick?	46:28
Nathan Andrew McDonald	They would have to go to Kosciusko, which was nine miles away, to the local hospital.	46:32
Doris Dixon	So by this time, people weren't doing much of their own healing? Were they still relying on home remedies by the time you'd come around?	46:37
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Home remedies, you would hear—I know that the lady next door, Mrs. Sarah Fox, who were from—She and her husband came from Choctaw County and they lived there in Ethel. And I would hear Ms. Fox talk about certain things would cure this, that, and the other. But my mother didn't believe in them. And only one—	46:49

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.	0:01
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."	1:06
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.	1:59
Doris Dixon	Are you're reading this when you were in school? What level?	2:48
Nathan Andrew McDonald	I think I was in college, probably a freshman and sophomore year in college. I have a—	2:53
Doris Dixon	Mid to early sixties?	2:57
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Yeah, it was about '66.	3:00
Doris Dixon	Okay.	3:02
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.	3:04
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.	3:48
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.	4:20
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.	4:56
Doris Dixon	And this was in Mary Holmes College?	5:43
Nathan Andrew McDonald	Yeah.	5:45
Doris Dixon	Is that a phenomenally [indistinct 00:05:47]?	5:46
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.	5:47
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?	6:38

Item Info

Title:

Nathan McDonald interview recording, 1995 August 07

Date:

August 7, 1995

Creator:

McDonald, Nathan Andrew

Contributor:

Dixon, Doris

Description:

Name: Nathan Andrew McDonald; Date of birth: 1945-10-06; Place of birth: Washington, D.C.; Occupation(s): librarian; educator; teacher; Residence: Itta Bena, MS
Informant ID: 1155; Interviewed by: Doris Dixon.

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English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

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Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-2004

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The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired the Records of the Behind the Veil Oral History Project from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.

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CC BY-NC 4.0

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Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

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0cfb5ca3-dc2a-413b-9cc5-f740228fee92
behindtheveil
3804fda3-89f8-46d6-8938-941d46328ff9
ark:/87924/r4br8zr07
3804fda3-89f8-46d6-8938-941d46328ff9

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Nathan McDonald interview recording, 1995 August 07

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1. Nathan McDonald administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Nathan McDonald interview recording, 1995 August 07

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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