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American politician

George Henry White (December 18, 1852 – December 28, 1918) was an American attorney and politician, elected as a Republican U. S. Congressman from North Carolina's 2nd congressional district between 1897 and 1901. He later became a banker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and in Whitesboro, New Jersey, an African American community he co founded. White was the last African American Congressman during the beginning of the Jim Crow era and the only African American to serve in Congress during his tenure. In North Carolina, "fusion politics" between the Populist and Republican parties led to a brief period of renewed Republican and African American political success in elections from 1894 to 1900, when White was elected to Congress for two terms after serving in the state legislature. After the Democratic dominated state legislature passed a suffrage amendment that disenfranchised blacks in the state, White did not seek a third term. He moved permanently to Washington, D. C., where he had a law practice and became a banker, moving again to Philadelphia in 1906. After White left office, no other African American served in Congress until 1929. No African American was elected to Congress again from a former Confederate state until Barbara Jordan's election in 1972, and there wasn't an African American elected to Congress from North Carolina again until Eva Clayton in 1992.

White was born in 1852 in Rosindale, Bladen County, North Carolina, where his natural mother may have been a slave. His father Wiley Franklin White was a free person of color, of African and Scots Irish ancestry, who worked as a laborer in a turpentine camp. George had an older brother John, and their father may have purchased their freedom. In 1857 George's father Wiley White married Mary Anna Spaulding, a young local woman of mixed race and the granddaughter of Benjamin Spaulding. Born into slavery as the son of a slave mother and a white plantation owner, Benjamin had been freed by his father as a young man. As a free man of color, Spaulding worked to acquire more than 2,300 acres of pine woods, which he apportioned to his own large family. In 1860, the White family lived on a farm in Welches Creek township, Columbus County. Because George White was so young when Mary Anna joined the family, he always thought of her as his mother. She and his father had more children together, his half siblings. In 1874, White started studies at Howard University, founded in 1867 in Washington, D. C. as a historically black college open to men and women of all races. He studied classical subjects to be certified as a schoolteacher. In addition, he worked for five months at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, which had visitors from around the world, and got to see something of its thriving black community, some of whose ancestors had been free since shortly after the American Revolutionary War, when Pennsylvania abolished slavery. White finished at Howard in 1877 and returned to North Carolina, where he was hired as a principal at a school in New Bern. He also read the law, studying it in the city as a legal apprentice under former Superior Court Judge William J. Clarke, who had become a Republican after the war and founded a newspaper. In 1879 White was admitted to the North Carolina bar.

On February 27, 1879, White married Fannie B. Randolph, who was the daughter of John H Randolph, Jr, and Della Redmond Randolph. She died in September 1880, soon after the birth of their daughter Della. In 1882 he married Nancy J. Scott, who died the same year. On March 15, 1887, he married Cora Lena Cherry. Her sister Louisa was married to Henry Plummer Cheatham, a future political rival. White and Cora had three children: Mary Adelyne, called "Mamie;" Beatrice Odessa (who died young); and George Henry White, Jr.

Three of White's four children survived to adulthood: Della died in 1916 in Washington, D. C., followed by George Jr., who died in Pittsburgh in 1927. Mamie died in New York City in 1974. His wife, Cora Lena White, died in 1905. In 1915, George White married Ellen Avant Macdonald of North Carolina, who survived him.

Following White's departure, no other African American served in Congress until Oscar De Priest was elected from Illinois in 1928. No African American North Carolinian was elected to Congress until Eva Clayton and Mel Watt won seats in the House of Representatives in 1992. In 1906 the White family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a city with a well established African American community, then experiencing significant growth due to the Great Migration. During this time White practiced law and founded a commercial savings bank. White was a co founder of the town of Whitesboro in southern New Jersey as a planned community developed for African Americans. and was buried at an unmarked grave in Eden Cemetery in nearby Collingdale. His son George, Jr. (d. 1927, Pittsburgh) and daughter Mamie (d. 1974, New York City) were buried next to him. His widow Ellen White moved to Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1920; by 1930 she married Edward W. Coston there. In 2012 George Henry White: American Phoenix, a documentary about George Henry White's life and legacy, was released. 115 mins. Produced by LightSmith Productions. The George Henry White Fund was set up to support efforts for education about his life and legacy. In 2013, a historic marker in White's honor was set up in Whitesboro by the "Concerned Citizens of Whitesboro, New Jersey." In 2014, the George Henry White Pioneer Award was established by the Benjamin and Edith Spaulding Descendants Foundation in his honor; that year the biannual award was presented to Dr. Benjamin R. Justesen, who has published the first full length biography of White and an edited collection of his writings and speeches. On October 29, 2015, a gravestone for White's grave was unveiled at Historic Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, Pennsylvania. Speakers included State Senator Anthony H. Williams of Philadelphia (Eighth District). In 2015, the George Henry White Memorial Community Center has been founded in Bladen County, North Carolina, White's birthplace, for education about him and the achievements of people associated with the Farmers' Union community in Columbus and Bladen counties.