[piano intro] [gentle music] - I believe that George Henry White is one of the most understudied and underappreciated political figures in United States history.

He understood Black aspiration because he understood it because he had lived it.

- He is always, in his darkest moment, he's an optimist.

- You can do it.

- George H. White created this community as a way to bring his own people, to create group economics which means that you could do business with yourself.

- Congressman White foresaw, literally what came to being in the latter part of the 20th century.

[gentle music] - I think that was what president Obama tapped into when he talked about him in 2009.

- And at the end of an inspiring farewell address, the gentleman from North Carolina said, "This, Mr. Chairman is perhaps "the Negro's temporary farewell to the American Congress.

"But let me say, Phoenix like, "he will rise up someday and come again."

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ - He uses his last address in Congress, to remind his fellow congressmen, that what has happened in North Carolina is not only unconstitutional, but he's reminding them that this will not last, this will not stand.

- [George] You may use our labor for two and a half centuries and then taunt us for our poverty, but let me remind you, we will not always remain poor.

You may withhold even the knowledge of how to read God's Word, and then taunt us for our ignorance.

But we would remind you that there is plenty of room at the top, and we are climbing.

Obliterate race hatred, party prejudice, and help us to achieve nobler ends, greater results and become satisfactory citizens to our brothers in White.

[gentle music] [Narrator] George White was born in 1852 in Bladen County to a father of White, Black and Indian ancestry.

The actual ancestry of his mother is unknown.

There are many scholars who believe that perhaps she was enslaved.

[gentle music] - His mother may have been a slave.

We don't know, he never said, one way or the other.

And it's unlikely, because for a free man to father a child with a slave owned by someone else would've been a crime at the time.

[gentle music] - His biological mother passes away at an early age and his father remarries into this prominent, relatively speaking, prominent family, free people of color, the Spaldings.

- The upshot of all his upbringing, was that he treated Mariana Spalding White as his mother, the only mother he ever knew.

[mid tempo country music] They were turpentine farmers.

They raised thousands of acres of pine trees and tapped the pine trees to take the rosin out to boil into turpentine.

So George White grew up as a free child.

- He's a literal tar hill turpentinian and dippin', scraping, hacking lonely pine trees, that was our main industry.

[gentle music] - Probably his stepmother was the most important influence in his young life.

She was one of nearly 100 grandchildren of a man named Benjamin Spalding, who was the patriarch of the family, a freed slave.

I don't believe he could read or write but he insisted that all his children and grandchildren be taught to read and write.

- These folks are wholesale behind education as a platform to come outta slavery not only for free people of color, but for everyone.

[gentle music] - [George] You may withhold even the knowledge of how to read God's Word and then taunt us for our ignorance.

[gentle music] - He is able to receive an education.

That's rare because this is before the civil war.

Being free, his family would've paid for him to go to a private institution to receive any type of training in literacy, any type of training in math.

And he receives that training.

[gentle music] - He was so bright and so acquisitive of knowledge that they decided, his family and one of his school teachers decided that he should go to Lumberton where a normal school, a private normal school was being run.

And that was what began his greater education.

[gentle music] - He goes on to Howard University, where he finishes in 1877 with a teaching degree.

So he's able to achieve a certain level of educational success that was impossible or closed off to millions of African Americans during this period.

- [Narrator] His time spent in the nation's capital would alter his life.

[gentle music] - He was suddenly on almost a world stage.

He had the opportunity to meet many of the famous men of the day.

He was able to go to Congress and hear other Black congressmen make speeches.

And I think that George White was taking all this in.

He had a voracious appetite for knowledge.

[gentle music] - And after graduating from Howard, George Henry White sets up a residence in New Bern.

New Bern was the place to be during this period in history.

New Bern develops this very large Black population during the civil war, so that means that during reconstruction there's this large Black population in New Bern, a Black population that's hungry for education, that's hungry for all of the fruits and benefits of reconstruction.

He goes to New Bern, where he becomes the principal of the local Black school in New Bern.

While serving as the principal of that school, he also studies law.

He becomes friends with a White man in New Bern by the name of William Clarke.

Surprisingly William Clarke had been a former Confederate general, who has a change of heart during reconstruction and makes the education of African Americans one of his priorities.

He becomes really a mentor to White.

He allows White to study law with him.

And in 1879 because of his tutelage, George Henry White sits for the North Carolina bar and passes it successfully.

- If you're on a fly on the wall it had to be almost this dynamic relationship.

You can imagine on one hand, George Henry White soaking up just all of the legalisms and the history and the education and all the jurisprudence that Walter Clarke could effuse to him.

And on the other hand, you have to have known that Clarke spotted the genius in George Henry White and knew what he was doing, would have rippling outcomes and good outcomes for a long time to come.

- George Henry White is not content to simply open a legal practice in New Bern, he aspires to political office, so in 1880, he runs for the North Carolina General Assembly.

He runs for a seat in the North Carolina House of Representatives, and he wins that seat.

One of the first bills that he puts forward it was a bill to make education compulsory for White and Black students.

Goes back to New Bern to continue his flourishing legal practice.

A few years later he has another term in the North Carolina General Assembly.

This time in the North Carolina Senate.

In both of these political houses, he champions public education.

He understands how important it is for African Americans to learn to read and write to secure their freedom.

- [Narrator] In 1887, White was elected solicitor for his judicial district, the equivalent of a district attorney in today's legal system.

He quickly established himself as a gifted attorney and orator.

- People were a little...

They were in awe of him, because he seemed to take over the courtroom when he walked in, and he'd make it argument that even White juries would listen to him and say "That man knows what he is talking about."

He was incredibly successful.

He actually defeated some of the best known White attorneys in Eastern North Carolina in court.

So I think he was making almost an unconscious use of this charisma, this great charisma that he carried with him.

- [George] Justice, not charity is what we want and what we have a right to demand.

- He's the only African American solicitor in the United States.

By this point in time throughout the South, many African Americans have already been disenfranchised.

Yet we have a Black man serving as the district attorney for a wide region of Eastern North Carolina.

- [Narrator] White, next set his sights on a US congressional seat representing north Carolina's second district known as the Black Second.

The heavily gerrymandered district was designed to weaken the Black vote in Eastern North Carolina.

[gentle music] - We forget that as David Cecelski says, "The Black Second, "was an island in a White supremacist sea."

So the idea that, that there was a Black man elected to Congress 20 years after reconstruction seems impossible.

It's it's like, how could that happen?

Given the amount of racial terror given the rise of the KU Klux Klan, given the fact that there was so much voter intimidation in Southern states, how was it that we had an African American elected to Congress when he was elected?

And that's because of the power of the Black Second, this idea that the second congressional district existed it existed because of racial gerrymandering.

But African Americans used that district to have a voice on our federal level.

- [Narrator] One of White's first congressional legislative efforts was the introduction of a federal anti-lynching law.

Spurred in part by the murder of us postmaster, Fraser Baker and his infant daughter in Lake City, South Carolina.

- An armed mob, burned down the post office with the postmaster in it at night, killed one of his children, shot his wife and two of his other children.

And George White said, "This cannot stand."

- [George] We have kept quiet, while hundreds and thousands of our race have been strung up by the neck unjustly, by mobs of murderers.

If a man commit a crime, he would never found an apologist in me because his face is Black, he ought to be punished, but he ought to be punished according to the law as administered in a court of justice.

[gentle music] - Anti-lynching bills, and things which you would think common sense and par for the course but it just goes to show you how far United States was from that ideal of democracy then, and where he was, and where we were willing to admit where we were then.

- [Narrator] A version of this legislation would later pass Congress, becoming known as the Emmett Till Antilynching Act.

Whites increasing political stature drew more and more negative press.

- "News & Observer" caricatures of George Henry White as a vampire, and the very epitome of "Negro rule" and as is being a espoused in the Democratic papers then, the Negro rule is a way to almost convey to the White population that George Henry White, in some strange sense of the imagination represents this vampire, that's wanting to come and rule Whites, when in fact Black rule is a tongue in cheek for there will be White rule over Black bodies, and not Black rule over Black bodies.

- Raleigh "News & Observer" publisher, Josephus Daniels led the effort with venomous attacks inciting race division, and hatred.

- Number one, he's selling newspapers.

He's a business person.

The vilifying George Henry White and the yellow journalism of that timeframe, sells newspapers the red meat of the day.

Secondly, he's part and parcel of this literal coup that is taking place in the 1890s in North Carolina, where on one hand, you have the press that's vilifying everything Republican and everything Black, and on the other hand, you have the paramilitary wing of the KU Klux Klan known as the Red Sharks, going throughout the land, terrorizing people at courthouses and farms in many communities across Eastern North Carolina and Sand Hills.

- [Narrator] The growing fusion politics of the period, especially in Eastern North Carolina threatened the White Democratic Party's plans for a return to statewide power.

- The Democrats in the East are a minority in numbers.

When the White farmers, many of them in the East say we are tired of being fleeced by sharecroppers and loan sharks, who are coming in and charging us these exorbitant interest rates for loans.

And these are White farmers who are finally seeing that "Hey, we have more in common with these Black farmers "than we have in common with the Bourbon Democrats.

"So we're gonna join forces for our common good."

So this starts in the late 1880s in North Carolina The fusion period had taken away many Democrats who became populists, and then they joined with the Republicans.

It's enough fusion people elected along with Republicans that allow for the Republicans to control the legislature in Raleigh.

And North Carolina by that count was the only Southern state that did not and was not controlled by Democrats.

- When George White is running again for Congress in 1898 he is encountering this gathering tide of Democratic resistance.

They're saying we have to figure out a way to defeat as many Republicans as possible, starting with him, because he was the national face of...

They made him the national face of the Republican Party, a Black man from North Carolina.

- And what results from that is nothing less than the only coup d'etat in American history that takes place in November, 1898 in Wilmington, North Carolina.

[gentle music] Literally, bringing out the Gatling gun in Wilmington and mowing down the population of people and taking the city by force.

And what is, again, the only coup d'etat in American history since the American revolution.

The coup that essentially runs the duly elected city council Republicans and Democrats are biracial.

City council runs 'em out - [George] Friends and business relations have been torn asunder, property destroyed, men and women shot down Black dogs by blood thirsty mob, under the pretense of law.

- [Narrator] George White had already won reelection to a second term but the Wilmington Massacre signaled the onset of a new violent repressive era of racism and voter disenfranchisement.

- After 1898, in 1900, the North Carolina General Assembly passes a disenfranchisement amendment.

The essentially disenfranchised African Americans with literacy tests that were gonna be quite subjective with grandfather clauses that essentially said, "Anyone whose ancestor could vote before 1867 "will be able to vote," which eliminated African Americans.

They also passed poll taxes.

So essentially in 1900 through this constitutional amendment the General Assembly has disenfranchised 90% of Black voters in the state of North Carolina.

[gentle music] - Today, it's hard for us to appreciate what a wall 1898 erected between us today and our knowledge of the past.

And I don't think it's only our knowledge of African American history that was lost.

I also think that it in the same way that 1898 wasn't only or maybe even fundamentally about White people being anti-Black, it was about driving a wedge between Black and White people because a Black and White coalition had been elected into almost every important statewide office in West Carolina.

At that point, the majority of the General Assembly, governor and senators, and the goal of the White supremacist wasn't first and above all to be...

I think to be anti-Black it was to be anti-Black and White together.

It's out of that, that they created the Jim Crow social order.

It was about making sure that Black and White would not be in proximity in a way.

That I can't be sitting at a Durham Bulls game...

If the Bulls had existed in that day.

And be sitting next to an African American father and start to talk about how our children, and that we start getting concerned about problems in our schools.

And then we can't say, "Well maybe we should get a few people together "to discuss it."

And that's the beginning of interracial politics.

1898 and and the White supremacy campaign of 1900 were about making sure that couldn't happen.

[gentle music] - [Narrator] The denial of African Americans voting rights in North Carolina, meant the end of Congressman White's congressional career.

[gentle music] 27 years would pass before another African American would sit in the US Congress.

North Carolina would not see another African American in Congress for 91 years.

[gentle music] Congressman White would never return to the state.

[gentle music] - [George] You have 250 years stalling on us.

And if you are honest, if you are fair if you are not cowards, and of course you're not you certainly will be willing to accord to us at this late date all the rights of American citizens enjoyed by you and even chance in the race of life is all that we ask.

- When George Henry White leaves Congress, they stay in Washington DC for a few years before George Henry White decides that he wants to form an all Black community.

- [Narrator] White chose a 2000 acre tract of land in Southern New Jersey, for his new community that would become known as Whitesboro.

- He has this large parcel of land divided up into tracts and he is selling this land to African Americans who are interested in living in a Northern town where they would once again have access to the ballot, and they would not be subject to the same forms of lack subjugation.

[gentle music] [feet stomping] - George H. White created this community as a way to bring his own people, to create group economics, which means that you can do business with yourself.

- This is the future as George White sees it.

He says, "We can show you "you won't let us have political freedom "but we've got economic freedom."

[gentle music] - Can we just try and really take advantage of the American free enterprise system and all it has to offer for everybody so that we're all contributing to building a great country.

That's really what it's all about.

In order to do that you gotta go back and focus on the least of these.

That's what George H. White really was talking about.

That's the same thing we want for every single person not only in Whitesboro, but in this country to be able to find your potential as a human being find your purpose as a human being.

And then you go out and then you serve the world based on your gifts and your talents.

- While George Henry White might not have foreseen the exact details of Montgomery and Selma, while he might not have foreseen the precise outlines of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and all the struggles to come, he knew that someday African Americans would sit in our city halls and state house.

He knew as Frederick Douglas knew, as Harriet Tubman knew, as Martin Luther king Jr. knew that "the arc of the moral universe is long, "but it bends towards justice."

[audience applauding] [gentle music] - [George] This is perhaps the Negros temporary farewell to the American Congress.

But let me say, Phoenix like, he will rise up someday and come again.

♪ People in the land of Georgia ♪ ♪ Little they cared about God ♪ ♪ When the news got in the land that ♪ ♪ Man was burning on the log ♪ ♪ That man was countin' his money ♪ ♪ Yeah, he was grinnin' mighty broad ♪ ♪ He held a greenback dollar aloft, said ♪ ♪ This money gonna make me a god ♪ ♪ I'll tell you 'bout the man ♪