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Searching for Freedom: The George H. White Story
September 17, 2022 @ 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm EDT
The Baton Foundation, in partnership with the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, will host a film screening and Q & A about Post-Reconstruction Congressman George Henry White. This program is funded by Atlanta Civic Site–The Annie E. Casey Foundation and is free to the public. Registration is required.
About the Program
Farmer and historian Earl L. Ijames will introduce the film George H. White: Searching for Freedom and share a short video about the roles of North Carolina and Georgia in the passage of the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery. Following the screenings, Ijames will facilitate a Q&A session.
About the Film
The documentary film, George H. White: Searching for Freedom (30 mins.), chronicles the career of post-Reconstruction Congressman George H. White.
Born in 1852 in Bladen County, N.C. to a family of turpentine farmers, George H. White was raised to believe that education was the path to progress. Upon graduating from Howard University in 1877 with a degree in education, White settled in New Bern, N.C. where he became a school principal and studied law. Soon after passing the North Carolina State Bar, he won a seat in the state’s House of Representatives and proposed a bill to make education mandatory for all children. He later served in the North Carolina Senate, where he continued to champion public education, and as solicitor of his judicial district–the only Black solicitor in the United States. White quickly earned a reputation as a gifted attorney and charismatic orator, gaining the support of Black voters in eastern North Carolina.
In 1896, White was elected to the U.S. Congress. Following the infamous 1898 white supremacist insurrection in Wilmington, N.C., he proposed the nation’s first anti-lynching bill, a version of which was passed in 2022 as the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. White was reelected to a second term but departed in 1901, as a wave of racial terror and Black disenfranchisement swept North Carolina and the south. In his farewell address to Congress, White predicted the “Phoenixlike” return of Black representation in the federal government. Twenty-seven years would pass before another Black would serve in the U.S. Congress.
About the Speaker
Earl L. Ijames is a farmer, historian and Curator, African American History and Agriculture at the North Carolina Museum of History. Ijames also has many years of experience working in the North Carolina Office of Archives and History