He was born in Gloster, Louisiana, to Charlie and Serena White, but was raised by Wade and Delsey Douglas from the age of three months. He remained with them until 1941. Nathaniel worked in the fields, cutting cane, picking cotton, and plowing with mules. He made 25 cents a day "working from sun up to sundown," he recalls. He also hauled pulpwood and cut crossties. "I milked so many cows I got where I couldn't drink milk," he says. For medicine his guardians gathered herbs and other plants. He went to a doctor for the first time on April 15,1941. Nathaniel says he walked five miles to church. He joined Mount Moriah Baptist Church in 1935. Soon after entering the U.S. Army in April of 1941, he was involved in a riot involving soldiers in Alexandria and was shot in the leg. As a member of Company C of the 93^rd Engineer Regiment, he was sent to Alaska in 1942 where he drove a caterpillar and a truck in building the Alaska Highway. Only three whites were in the unit--the captain, second lieutenant, and first lieutenant. A year later he was sent to Fort Lewis, Washington where he learned demolitions. He sailed to India with the 93^rd where he built runways and bridges. He returned to America and was discharged November 22, 1945. Nathaniel had married Eunicestine Carroll on January 2, 1945, who was working in a rubber plant in California. After the war Nathaniel worked in construction in Shreveport, and then spent 29 years in civil service at Barksdale Air Force Base. He retired in 1975.