Researching George White

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 Madoc, Ontario. He received a law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto and returned to Madoc to begin his legal practice after serving in World War I with the 44th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

White was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1940. He was elected as a "National Government" candidate as that was the banner the Conservatives used for that election. The Tories subsequently changed their name to "Progressive Conservative" and he was re-elected under that banner for the riding of Hastings—Peterborough (known as Hastings—Frontenac after 1953).

As an Opposition MP, White promoted the cause of war veterans and helped write the legislation known as the "Veteran's Charter".

The 1957 election resulted in the first Progressive Conservative government in over two decades. In September of that year new Progressive Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker made White his first appointment to the Senate so that Sidney Earle Smith, the newly appointed Secretary of State for External Affairs despite not being an MP could attempt to win a seat in the House of Commons through a by-election.

White served as the government's whip in the Senate from 1958 until September 1962 when he was appointed Speaker. He only served in the Chair for a few months until the defeat of the Diefenbaker government in the 1963 federal election. He voluntarily retired from the Senate on November 17, 1972 when he turned 75.

He was born at Bantry to Royal Navy officer Boyle White and Honoria O'Sullivan. He is believed to have gone to sea at a young age, visiting Sydney in 1819 and China in the early 1820s before settling in Sydney in 1826, where he became a clerk for the Colonial Secretaries Office. From 1827 he was assistant surveyor and then from 1838 surveyor in the Surveyor-General's Department. On 17 June 1830 he married Maria Greig Mudie, with whom he had three children. He retired from surveying in 1853 and farmed at Singleton, Maitland and Raymond Terrace, but was not successful, being bankrupted in 1847. In 1858 he was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for Northumberland and Hunter, but he did not re-contest in 1859. He was bankrupted again in 1867. White died at Double Bay in 1876.