FASCINATING NUGGET OF BLACK HISTORY: George Henry White (December 18, 1852 – December 28, 1918) was an attorney and politician, elected as a Republican U.S. Congressman from North Carolina and serving between 1897 and 1901, and a banker. He is considered the last African-American Congressman of the Jim Crow era, one of twenty to be elected in the late nineteenth century from the South. The Democrats had regained control of the state legislature in the 1870s, but black candidates continued to be elected from some districts. After disfranchisement was achieved in new state constitutions from 1890 to 1908, no African American would be elected from the South until 1972, after the Civil Rights Movement and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to authorize federal oversight and enforcement of constitutional rights. In North Carolina, fusion politics between the Populist and Republican parties led to a brief period of renewed Republican and African-American political success from 1894 to 1900. After White left office, no other black American would serve in Congress until Oscar De Priest was elected in 1928. No African American was elected to Congress from North Carolina until 1992. In 1880 White ran as a Republican candidate from New Bern and was elected to a single term in the North Carolina House of Representatives. He helped pass a law creating four state normal schools for African Americans in order to train more teachers, and was appointed in 1881 as the principal of one of the schools in New Bernd. He helped develop the school in its early years and encourage students to go into teaching. In 1884 White returned to politics, winning election to the North Carolina Senate from Craven County. In 1886, he was elected solicitor and prosecuting attorney for the second judicial district of North Carolina, a post he held for eight years until 1894. While considering running for Congress, he deferred to his brother-in-law Henry Plummer Cheatham, who was elected to the US House in 1890. White was a delegate to the 1896 and 1900 Republican National Conventions. In 1896 he was elected to the U.S. Congress representing the predominantly black Second District from his residence in Tarboro. He defeated the white Democratic incumbent Frederick A. Woodard. The Republican president William McKinley carried many on his coattails, but White also benefited because a Democratic-Populist fusionist candidate had drawn off votes from Woodard. In addition, the 1894 legislature had repealed some laws which Democrats had used to restrict black voting, and the turnout in 1896 among black voters was 85 percent.[9] In 1898 White was re-elected in a three-way race. In a period of increasing disenfranchisement of blacks in the South, he was the last of five African Americans in Congress during the Jim Crow era of the later nineteenth century. There were two from South Carolina, Cheatham before him from North Carolina, and one from Virginia. After them, no African Americans would be elected from the South until 1972, after federal civil rights legislation was passed to enforce constitutional rights for citizens.[10] No African Americans were elected to Congress from North Carolina until 1992. Republicans since the 1880s had been calling for federal oversight of elections, to try to halt the discriminatory abuses in the South. Representative Henry Cabot Lodge and Senator George Hoar led a renewed effort in early 1890, when Lodge introduced a Federal Elections Bill to enforce provisions of the 15th Amendment giving citizens the right to vote. Henry Cheatham was the only black Congressman at the time and never gave a speech while the House considered the bill. It narrowly passed the House in July but languished in the Senate; it was eventually filibustered by southern Democrats, overwhelmed by debate on silver coinage to relieve economic strain in rural areas.[11] During his tenure, White worked for African-American civil rights and consistently highlighted issues of justice, relating discussions on the economy, foreign policy and colonization to the treatment of blacks in the South. He supported an effort for reduction legislation derived from the 14th Amendment, to reduce apportionment of Congressional delegations in proportion to the voting population that states were illegally disenfranchising.[9] He challenged the House in 1899 and again after the 1900 census to proceed with reduction legislation.[11] Representative Edgar Dean Crumpacker of Indiana, who was on the Select Committee of the Census, had introduced a reduction measure that got the most attention, but it was reported out of committee in 1899 too late for action. In 1901 he introduced another measure. His bill proposed to penalize Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina, which had approved state constitutions disenfranchising blacks. (They were followed by other southern states through 1908.) He proposed a plan based on reducing representation based on total state illiteracy rates, as he believed that illiterates would fail the education or literacy tests. While his plan earned much discussion, his bill was tabled. A reduction effort in 1902 also failed.[11] White used the power of his office to appoint several African-American postmasters across his district, with the assistance of the states Republican senator, Jeter C. Pritchard. They were able to make patronage hires, as did other postmasters. Following the actions of North Carolina Democrats in 1899, who changed the state constitution to disfranchise blacks, White chose not to seek a third term. He told the Chicago Tribune, I cannot live in North Carolina and be a man and be treated as a man.[9] He announced plans to leave his home state and start a law practice in Washington, DC at the end of his term.[9] On January 20, 1900, White introduced the first bill in Congress to make lynching a federal crime to be prosecuted by federal courts; it died in committee, opposed by southern white Democrats.[12] A month later, as the House was debating issues of territorial expansion, White defended his bill by giving examples of crimes in the South. He said that conditions in the region had to provoke questions about ...national and international policy.[11] He said, Should not a nation be just to all her citizens, protect them alike in all their rights, on every foot of her soil, in a word, show herself capable of governing all within her domain before she undertakes to exercise sovereign authority over those of a foreign land—with foreign notions and habits not at all in harmony with our American system of government? Or, to be more explicit, should not charity first begin at home?[11] White delivered his final speech in the House on January 29, 1901: This is perhaps the Negroes temporary farewell to the American Congress, but let me say, Phoenix-like he will rise up some day and come again. These parting words are in behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but God-fearing people; faithful, industrious, loyal, rising people – full of potential force.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 06:36:47 +0000
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