G.K. Butterfield Interview Transcript

This item is featured in:

G.K. Butterfield Oral History

    Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project  

 
G.K Butterfield 

Interviewed by Melody Hunter-Pillion 

May 15, 2023 

Wilson, North Carolina 

Length: 01:59:58 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Conducted in collaboration with the Southern Oral History Program at University of North 

Carolina at Chapel Hill 

LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute, NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. 



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This transcript has been reviewed by G.K Butterfield, the Southern Oral History Program, and 

LDF. It has been lightly edited, in consultation with G.K Butterfield, for readability and clarity. 

Additions and corrections appear in both brackets and footnotes. If viewing corresponding video 

footage, please refer to this transcript for corrected information.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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[START OF INTERVIEW] 

 
 Melody Hunter-Pillion: [00:00:00] This is Melody Hunter-Pillion from the Southern 

Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is May 15, 2023, and 

I’m here in Wilson, North Carolina, with Congressman G.K. Butterfield, who represented North 

Carolina’s 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2004 through 

2022. Is that correct, Congressman? 

 G.K. Butterfield: That’s correct. Yes.  

 MHP: We’re conducting this interview for the LDF Oral History Project. And we want 

to thank you so much for sharing your story with us. We’re going to start from the beginning. 

You were born and raised in Wilson, a place that you described in some other interviews as 

being rigidly segregated when you were younger. So can you just kind of tell us about the 

Wilson of your childhood, what you remember?  

 GKB: [00:00:43] Well, first of all, let me thank you for coming to preserve this history. 

It’s something that I have lived with all of my life. And as I get into my senior years now, it is 

really important to me to preserve this history. And so thank you and thank you to the Legal 

Defense Fund for its willingness to cooperate in this venture. My story is very complicated. It’s a 

very long life, and I’ll try to do it very quickly. I was born in 1947. My mother was a classroom 

teacher. She was a native of the community. My dad was a dentist who was an immigrant from 

Bermuda who had immigrated over in 1917 and volunteered for the war, after he couldn’t find a 

job, I might say. And when he was discharged from the Army, he went to Shaw University and 

enrolled in an undergraduate program. While there, he met my mother, who was a high school 

student at Shaw. During those days, there were no high schools for African Americans. The 

highest grade was like the fourth or fifth grade. And they weren’t, you know, excellent schools. 



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They were just, you know, very modest schools. And so if a family had the means, they would 

send their children to what was referred to as boarding schools. And so Shaw University had a 

boarding school, a high school. And so while there at the boarding school at Shaw, Dad in 

college at Shaw, the two of them met, which would eventually lead to a marriage. Dad graduated 

from Shaw University, went over to Meharry and received his dental degree. Mom returned back 

to her home community and became a teacher in the Rosenwald schools. First of all in 

Northampton County, and then left the Rosenwald schools and came home to Wilson and taught 

at the Wilson Colored Graded School, which is where she had gone to graded school in her in 

her younger years. And so when Dad graduated from dental school, he came to Wilson, North 

Carolina, and married my mother. [00:02:49] June 7th, 1928, and they stayed together for many 

years. When Dad came to Wilson, he had no means, no assets. He had to live with my mother’s 

family. And we may later in the interview get into that. But he lived, he lived with my mother’s 

family. My grandfather was a Baptist minister here in town. And immediately the Depression set 

in, right after he arrived. But the interesting part about his arrival was not necessarily the 

Depression, but that the white political establishment called him in upon his arrival, welcomed 

him to the community, told him that he had married a very fine lady who was biracial, and my 

mother’s grandfather was white, in the community, and her grandmother was African American. 

And the white community was very fond of the Davis family and told my dad he was welcome 

into the community. They would do him a favor. They would allow him to become a registered 

voter. And so in 1928, my father became a registered voter. He was the 40th, according to my 

father. He was the 40th African American registered voter in town since Reconstruction. And so 

after, after becoming a registered voter, after opening his dental practice, he began a one-man 

crusade to get other African Americans registered to vote. And word got out in the white 



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community that he was doing this and he was threatened. He was told to cease and desist. And he 

did. And did not get involved in voter registration again until well into the 1940s. And so I was 

born in 1947. [00:04:41] In nineteen, in the 1940s, the Depression was over, World War II was 

over, and African Americans were building up a middle class in Wilson. It was certainly a 

segregated town. It was, Jim Crow was rampant, but a Black middle class was beginning to 

evolve. So in 1947, my dad founded the local branch of the NAACP. That was in 1947. 

Coincidentally, that was also the year that I was born. And the local branch was in the business 

of of trying to teach African Americans how to pass the literacy test in order to become 

registered voters. And they formed the NAACP. They would have working sessions in my living 

room, in my family’s living room every Saturday, trying to prepare African Americans for 

literacy tests. And they, and my dad’s brother in law, my mother’s brother, his name was Fred 

Davis Jr., joined my father and became an activist. He became more of an activist than my 

father. He was obsessed with voter registration. And the following two years, it was a modestly 

successful voter registration drive, between [19]47 and [19]49. But in 1949, my uncle, the one 

who was assisting my father, was involved in a vehicle accident. He was riding his bicycle. A 

white motorist from New York City was passing through the city. We didn't have interstate 

highways then. The highway actually meandered right through the heart of the Black 

community. And as my uncle was riding his bicycle that day, he was struck by a motorist and 

they took him to the local Black hospital, Mercy Hospital. He lay there on a stretcher for hours. 

They called the white doctor, Doctor Kerr, K-e-r-r, called Dr. Kerr to come treat my uncle. 

[00:06:43] And upon finding that it was the activist Fred Davis, he refused to come. After several 

hours, the hospital called again to the doctor. The doctor refused to come. He only said, I will get 

there as soon as I can. Well, around 9:15 that evening, my uncle passed away because of no 



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medical attention. And so now my dad is on his own again with his voter registration thing. And 

so in 1951, two years later, there was a vacancy at my church for pastor. My grandfather had 

been the pastor. My grandfather died in 1951. And so the church called a new pastor in 1951 

named Talmage, without the D. T-a-l-m-a-g-e, Talmage Watkins. He was a young Baptist 

preacher who was an activist. Reverend Watkins came into the community and bonded with my 

father, both at the same church, and they continued the voter registration drive that had started in 

1947. Reverend Watkins came up with the brilliant idea that since most of the educated or 

middle class, and I use those words very cautiously, because some were better off than others, 

but every African American suffered from discrimination. So it’s, it’s probably not a good idea 

to do to separate the classes in the Black community, because as far as I’m concerned, there was 

one class and that was, you know, African Americans who were terribly discriminated against. 

But anyway, the more affluent, the more educated African Americans lived in Ward Three. And 

I’ve got a picture of Ward Three over there that I can show you before you leave. Ward Three, 

the town was divided into six wards for the election of the city council. Ward Three was 

elongated, and half of the people in Ward Three were African American and the other half were 

white. [00:08:42] But African Americans were not registered. So 95% of the registered voters in 

Ward Three were white. Reverend Watkins came up with a brilliant idea that we will concentrate 

our voter registration efforts only in Ward Three to try to get those numbers up on par with white 

voter registration. And just maybe we could elect a Black city councilman. Reverend Watkins 

had done that in Fayetteville, which is where he lived before he came to Wilson. And so that was 

the strategy. And they, added many African Americans to the voter registration rolls. In 1953, 

Watkins encouraged my father to run for city council. And dad ran. And the white opponent was 

Herbert Harris. And Herbert Harris led a movement to remove African Americans from the voter 



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registration rolls as being improperly registered. And he was successful to some degree. And a 

couple of hundred African Americans were literally removed from the voter registration rolls. 

But still, there were a lot who were not removed. And so dad ran for election on May 5th, 1953. 

When the votes were counted, it was a tie vote. I’m going to try to remember. 382 to 382, I’m 

going to say. It was a tie vote between Harris and Butterfield. To resolve the tie, they blindfolded 

a little white girl named Debbie, Debbie Watson. And Debbie reached into a container that 

contained two names, my dad and Mr. Harris. Pulled out my father’s name. And my father, by 

lottery, became a city council member. It was called Board of Aldermen during those days. He 

became an alderman for the city of Wilson. That was very significant. In today’s politics, that 

would not be a big deal for an African American to get elected to the city council. [00:10:45] But 

in 1953, that was an Obama moment, as I have referred to it. He was the fourth African 

American elected to a to a city council in North Carolina. And I know where the other three 

were. We won’t go into that. But he was the fourth in in the state. And he took the oath of office. 

I have a picture of him taking the oath of office. And they were two year terms. And the two 

years came around pretty quickly. During his two years on the council, he advocated some real 

novel ideas, like more recreation for African Americans. Like paving the streets. Like better jobs 

for the colored citizens, as it was called back then, or Negro citizens. Pretty radical ideas [laughs] 

for the 1950s. Well, 1955 came along. No one thought Dad would be reelected. But the mayor 

was named Mayor John D. Wilson, just coincidentally named the same as the city. Mayor 

Wilson was fearful that he would not win reelection as mayor, and he knew that he needed some 

additional votes that he didn’t have. So he approached my father and said, Look, Dr. Butterfield, 

I’m running citywide, and Negro citizens in your ward can vote for me. So if you could influence 

them to vote for me, I think that would give me the cushion that I need to get reelected. And my 



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dad said, What about me? He said, Well, I’ve got family and friends who live in Ward Three, 

and I will quietly talk to them about supporting you. And so they had a political deal, if you will. 

And then the white business community in Wilson wanted a new recreation center for white 

children. And my father said, What about for Negro children? And they, they weren’t willing to 

cooperate. [00:12:45] And so my father said to them that he would ask the Negro community to 

vote against the bond referendum that was being used to raise the money for recreation. And so 

the business community, recognizing the need for better recreation, decided to capitulate and to 

agree to build a recreation center for Black children with a swimming pool identical to the 

swimming pool at the white recreation center. And it worked. They had the election in 1955. The 

mayor was reelected. My father was reelected. The bond referendum passed narrowly passed. It 

was the Black vote that made the difference because white people said they did not want their tax 

monies used for a recreation center for colored children. I mean, they blatantly said it. But 

anyway, that worked in 1955. Dad is reelected. Mayor John Wilson is very grateful to my father 

and tells him that he will be appointed as the finance chairman, chairman of the Finance 

Committee on the city, on the Board of Aldermen. By this time it’s the Board of Commissioners. 

And he was appointed chairman of the Finance Committee. A big deal. That was, that was the 

major committee on the city council. And so for the next two years, my dad began to really stir 

the pot and demand more things, integration of the baseball stadium as an example. And so by 

the time 1957 came along, they were sick and tired of Dr. G.K. Butterfield because he was 

disrupting the status quo. He was disrupting a way of life that whites in Wilson had become 

accustomed to. And they knew that with political power, the Black community could radically 

transform local government and the quality of life. And so 1957, they came to the conclusion 

they would not be able to defeat him. [00:14:48] And so the strategy of the white community was 



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to change the method of elections from ward elections to an at-large system. So my father would 

not just face the voters in Ward Three, where he was an icon, but he would have to face the 

voters citywide, where he was disliked by many. And so my family was on vacation. We were in 

New York visiting, visiting my relatives, same one I was telling you about with the dining room 

set. People looking at this won’t understand that. [laughs] 

 MHP: [laughs] 

 GKB:  That’s a conversation we had before the interview. But we were on vacation in 

New York City, and the city council called an emergency meeting to change the method of 

election from district to at-large. Dad flew back home on those old airlines, flew back home, 

rushed to Wilson to make the case that it shouldn’t be changed. And he was outvoted. So at the 

end of the day, and I want the record to be clear on this because I have misstated it over the 

years. And I want the record to be clear at the end. When the final vote was taken to change the 

method of election, my father actually voted for it. But he made a political calculation that since 

he was the only one on the council opposing it, that if he would capitulate and vote with the 

majority, he would win favor with some powerful people and would be able to get reelected. 

Well, you know what? It didn’t work. It didn’t work. He voted in favor of the change. I didn’t 

understand that for years. But he was defeated. In 1957. And he was pretty upset about that. I 

was ten years old at the time, and I’m beginning to understand what politics is and is not. 

[00:16:45] And like my father, I was pretty upset about it. I was upset because he was upset, let’s 

put it that way. And so not only did they change the method of the election from districts to at-

large, they made it a requirement that voters had to vote for a full slate, had to vote for all six 

seats. You couldn’t vote for one or two or three. And the purpose for that was to prevent the 

Black community from single shot voting. Some people call it bullet voting, single shot voting 



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for my father. And so, it was a, it was a nuclear moment. I mean, it just blew up the whole 

system. And so, in 1959, two years later, the community wanted my father to run again. He said, 

no, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to concentrate on some other things. 1961 came along, 

asked him to run again. He said, I’m not running. Then they went to my pastor, Reverend 

Watkins, and Watkins said, Absolutely, I’ll run. And there was a Black attorney in Wilson 

named Romallus Murphy. R-o-m-a-l-l-u-s, Romallus O. Murphy, who took the case and said, 

okay, Reverend Watkins, you run for the city council and I’m going to go to court before the 

election to try to get an injunction to stop the election, not because of the at-large election. He 

strategically said he was just going to go and challenge the anti-single shot provision of the new 

law because voters should have the discretion to vote for one, two, three, four, five or six people. 

And the law shouldn’t make them vote for six. So he thought he had a better case challenging the 

anti-single shot provision than he would challenging the at-large election. [00:18:42] And so who 

did Romallus Murphy call in but the NAACP. This is pre-LDF. The NAACP came in, Sam 

Mitchell out of Raleigh. Samuel Mitchell. He will be very prominent in your research. Samuel 

Mitchell came in along with a fellow named George Green, who eventually became a dear, dear 

friend of mine. In fact, we served as judges together years later. So Green, Mitchell, and Murphy 

handled the case, went to court before Judge Henry Stephens. Asked for an injunction. The 

request was denied. The election took place. Reverend Watkins lost the election because many, 

many votes were thrown out because the voter didn’t vote for a full slate. And that’s when the 

NAACP lawyers then went to court and asked for a trial. The judge who came along and again, I 

think it was Judge Stephens, Henry Stephens, heard the case and completely denied the claims. 

Lawyers then appealed to the state Supreme Court and the Supreme Court denied the claim. And 

then it went to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case entitled Watkins v. City of Wilson. And the 



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Supreme Court took it up and then decided not to take it up and dismissed it. But if you were to 

look at some of the briefs that were filed in Watkins v. City of Wilson and look at the per curiam 

decision of the U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Frankfurter didn’t participate in the decision, but if 

you would look at that, you would find it very interesting. And so now it’s 1961. We haven’t had 

a Black city councilman since 1957. And every two years we would run someone for the city 

council and they would come in last place. And that was the way it was for the next 20 years. 

[00:20:43] And so all of that to say that this had a profound, what I’ve just said to you has had a 

profound influence on my life choices. It influenced me to go into politics. It influenced me to go 

into law. And I’ve been able to do both and do it very well.  

MHP:  So, Congressman, I’m going to go back to, and you can hold it. Yeah, for a minute. 

I’m going to go back to 1953.  

 GKB: Yes.  

 MHP: Because at that time you were six years old.  

 GKB: I was six years old. Yes. 

 MHP: And all of this was going on around you. So your father’s running for office. Even 

before that, though, there was organizing going on and voter registration drives and people being 

taught, right, for these literacy tests. In your home.  

 GKB: Yes.  

 MHP: You’re seeing all of this. Tell me about that as a six year old. Did you, did you see 

some of this? What sort of things were you seeing?  

 GKB: [00:21:36] I witnessed African Americans on Saturday mornings coming into my 

living room, with my father, explaining to them that North Carolina has a literacy test that the 

state constitution requires. Those wanting to register to vote, to be able to read and to write, but 



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most importantly, to satisfy the registrar that you were literate. So people often say it was a two-

pronged test. It was a three-pronged test. Read, write and satisfy. And the satisfaction certainly 

was subjective on the part of the registrar. And many of these registrars registered people in their 

homes. So you have an African — and in the courthouse, but you have African Americans going 

to a courthouse that they were fearful of, maybe to a registrar’s home. Well, I’m pretty sure the 

white registrars didn’t allow African Americans into their homes, not for this purpose. But 

anyway, my father would teach them, you’ve got to be polite. You’ve got to say, yes, sir. Yes, 

ma’am. No, ma’am. No, sir. You’ve got to be polite. You’ve got to be respectful. You’ve got to 

listen to the question. You’ve got to, as best you can, to answer the question and just mainly be 

liked. It’s not as much about the literacy part as it is about the white registrar liking you. And so 

many of these people were teachers and they would have to read certain portions of the 

Constitution. [00:23:20] They would have to explain the difference between the Constitution and 

the Bill of Rights and all of that. And as John Lewis used to say, you know, count beans in a, 

jelly beans in a jar. Things that were literally impossible. But anyway, I remember that. Six years 

old in my living room. I remember that. And that was a precursor to my father getting elected in 

[19]53 and again in [19]55.  

 MHP: And what are you holding there from that campaign?  

 GKB: Yes, I just happened to look on the shelf in my den here, and I saw it. This is my 

father’s campaign literature of May 5th, 1953. This was a palm card, a hand card that he would 

give out to people in the community. And the card is very simple. It says, “Vote for Dr. G.K. 

Butterfield for alderman for the Third Ward in the primary, May 5th, 1953. Your vote and 

support would be appreciated.” And he has a unique pose. He put his finger, you know, on his 

forehead as if to say, I am a thinker. He would often tell me that, that’s what he intended with 



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this pose, to convey the subliminal message that he was a thinker. But I’m very proud of this 

possession. And I have it here in my home. And it’s on full display for anyone who visited, visits 

with me.  

 MHP: Thank you, Dr. Butterfield — Congressman Butterfield. Dr. Butterfield was your 

dad. 

 GKB: Yes. Yes. 

 MHP: Then let me, let’s go on to 1957. Here we see your dad is, you know, giving that 

impression. And yes, he was a thinker. But a thinker is a threat, right, in eastern North Carolina 

at that time, especially with Black folks wanting to exercise their, their rights as American 

citizens. And so what were you seeing at ten years old when everything happened in 1957? What 

sort of things did you see and what were you thinking at that time that you could process at that 

age?  

 GKB: [00:25:25] Now, my father is an educated man who immigrated from another 

country, Bermuda. It’s an island. Immigrated. And fought in the First World War. He had gone 

to France, was injured in the war. So his perception of life in the community was different than 

many people in Wilson, Black and white. And so he was a threat to the local political and 

economic systems in the community. And they wanted to do whatever they could to silence him. 

 MHP: Did you understand a lot of what was going on yourself?  

 GKB: Not really. Not in the beginning. I knew it was wrong. I knew my father was upset 

about it. I knew his friends were upset. Our church folk were. Our neighbors were. But as the 

years rolled on, I began to really process it. And by the time 1961 came along, when my pastor, 

Reverend Watkins, ran and was defeated and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, then I put 

it all together. This was racism.  



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 MHP: We’ve heard about your dad. I’m understanding, I’m getting an understanding of 

how influential he was in your life and his actions, how they influenced you. I want to ask a little 

bit about your mom, too. You talked about some of those folks coming into your home for these, 

this literacy test training. And a lot of them were teachers. Your mom was a teacher. Talk to me 

about her early influence on you, when you were a child.  

 GKB: [00:27:00] My mother's maiden name Addie Lourine, L-o-u-r-i-n-e Davis. She 

was born in 1902. Her father was Reverend Fred Davis, who was a mulatto. In today’s 

terminology, we would say biracial. He was mulatto because his father was Joe Davis, a white 

man in town, and his mother was Judah, J-u-d-a-h, who was an African American. That was my 

grandfather, Reverend Fred, Fred Davis, who was my mother’s father. My mother’s mother was 

Dinah, D-i-n-a-h, Dunston. And I think her family originated in Franklin County, which is a 

couple of counties over. But my mother was one of eight children born at the turn of the century. 

My mother’s eldest brother and the youngest brother died young. And so there were six Davis 

children that reached adulthood. She was the youngest girl. And the six of them lived with 

Reverend Fred Davis, their father, at 621 East Green Street. And in 1950, and he was the pastor. 

My grandfather was the pastor of Jackson Chapel First Baptist Church, which is, continues today 

to be my home church. Reverend Davis and Dinah Davis had six children. [00:28:41] And as the 

years went on, Dinah, my grandmother, unexpectedly died. And she died in 191[7] and left my 

grandfather with six children ranging from ages 17 to four or five. And so he raised his children. 

He insisted that they go to the graded school to get an elementary education, and then he insisted 

that they go to Shaw. He was a Baptist preacher, so he had a relationship with Shaw University, 

a Baptist school. And so he insisted that his children would go to Shaw to get their education. 

My mother, before going to Shaw, after she left the graded school, the Wilson Colored Graded 



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School, which had been formed in the 1880s, that’s probably another story for another day and 

another interview. But after leaving the graded school, she then went to a private industrial 

school that had been started, or founded, by a man named Sam Vick in the community. That 

needs illumination. At the graded school in 1917, a Black teacher named Mary Euell. E-u-e-l-l. 

She was a teacher at the graded school, got into a dispute with the principal of the graded school, 

an African American man named J.D. Reid. The dispute was over what time school started. April 

1st, 191[8], was the first day of Daylight Savings time. It was authorized by Congress because of 

World War I, and they wanted to preserve daylight. [00:30:39] And everybody understood the 

new time, except the principal, who had the key to the school. So when three or four hundred 

children showed up for school one morning and the teachers showed up, they couldn’t get in the 

building because the principal was on the old time. So the principal was an hour late getting to 

school and the teachers didn’t like it. And so Miss Euell, and Mr. Reid, Professor Reid, he was 

called, got into a dispute over the time. And so the principal demanded that Miss Euell go with 

him to the superintendent’s office to talk about the dispute. And upon arriving at Superintendent 

Coon’s office, Charles L. Coon, C-o-o-n, and he was an interesting fellow. I can make a speech 

on him another day as well, good and bad. He was an education reformer, even for African 

American children. But in a very limited way. But anyway, went to the superintendent’s office 

and Coon and the lady, Miss Euell, the teacher got into a disagreement and he got from behind 

his desk and came around and assaulted her and slapped her, knocked her to the floor. She 

returned to the graded school, told the teachers there what — and she was certainly upset with 

the superintendent for doing this, but she was also upset with the Black principal for not 

interfering and for instigating, sort of like Trump instigating January 6th. He was stirring it up. 

And so — maybe I shouldn’t have put that political line in there. But anyway, the teachers and 



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the parents of the children at the graded school were disgusted. And so they formed a separate 

school called the Industrial School, the Wilson Industrial School.1 [00:32:39] And we have 

pictures of it and all that. And my mother was one of the first students to go to the Industrial 

School. In fact, I think she may have been the valedictorian of the class and gave the speech at 

graduation time. And then that’s when she went to Shaw. But anyway, that’s too much detail. 

But anyway, Mother left Shaw with a high school diploma, came back home and became a 

teacher. Teachers during those days did not need college degrees. You could teach with a high 

school certificate. And that’s what she did for many years. After the, after World War II, which 

ended in 1941, my mother tried to get pregnant and when she would get pregnant, she would 

have a miscarriage. She would get pregnant again and have a miscarriage. She tried to consult 

with white obstetricians and they refused to treat her. So she read one day in a magazine that 

there was a, there was a white obstetrician in New York City named Frances Seymour, whose 

father, I believe had been the governor of New York State, and that she was willing to treat 

African American patients who had fertility issues.2 So Mom went to New York City and my 

dad went to New York City, consulted the Dr. Seymour. She got pregnant and carried the baby to 

term. That baby was me. I was born April 27, 1947, which was a Sunday morning at 11:00. And 

four days later, I was brought to Wilson, North Carolina, which is where I have remained all of 

my life. And so all of that to say Mom was a classroom teacher, Dad was a dentist slash activist.  

 MHP: [00:34:28] That was influential, but also just understanding the narrative of your, 

your birth and your origins is that here in a segregated North Carolina, your mother couldn’t get 

the kind of medical care that she would have needed to to have you.  

 
1 During transcript review, Mr. Butterfield noted that the full name of the school was the Wilson Normal 
and Industrial Institute. 
2 During transcript review, Mr. Butterfield noted that he was incorrect; Dr. Seymour's father did not ever 
serve as governor of New York State. 



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 GKB: She couldn’t get the medical treatment. My uncle, who was struck on the bicycle 

in 1949, couldn’t get medical treatment because of racism. My mother couldn’t get a specialist 

because of racism. And so we, I grew up in a totally segregated society in Wilson. And when I 

say totally segregated, I don’t mean in some ways. In all ways. Every way. Everything that you 

can imagine in Wilson, North Carolina and throughout the South until the sixties was total 

segregation, typically separated by a railroad track. [00:35:25] The, the Atlantic Coastline 

Railroad track came right through Wilson. The railroad was built in 1840 by slaves, and the 

railroad started in Wilmington and terminated in Weldon, North Carolina. It was the longest 

railroad in the world at the time, and it came right through Wilson and separated the two 

communities. When I say everything was separated, I mean, Black people couldn’t go to 

restaurants. And the few that would entertain the idea required African Americans to come to the 

back door and get the food. I saw it. I did it. Churches segregated. Recreation. Every single facet 

of civil society was totally segregated. And that was my experience. As my friend Congressman 

Jim Clyburn says all the time, we are the sum total of our experiences. And those were my 

experiences. But I, when I became a teenager, I became the activist that my father was, and tried 

to take it to a higher level. It was the 1960s now, and Martin Luther King, Jr., was prominent and 

others were prominent. And so I wanted to step in and lead protest marches in my hometown. 

My dad was not a protester. He wouldn’t get out on the sidewalk with a sign, you know, I mean, 

that wasn’t his style. He was more low key. My father was negotiating with the, with the retail 

stores to allow African Americans to get jobs and to sit at the lunch counters. I was out on the 

street with picket signs and two or three hundred other kids from the NAACP Youth chapter. We 

were protesting and demanding the integration of movie theaters and the like. And so that, those 



18 
 

were my teen years. And it happened naturally. I didn't just make a decision, I’m going to do 

this. It was almost expected that I would do it.  

 MHP: [00:37:28] And I’m going to ask you about that. You, you segue straight to all 

these questions. So this is perfect. And so you were already at Central when you started 

organizing these? Or did you start organizing —  

 GKB: No, I was in high school.  

 MHP: What —  

 GKB: I was 16 years. I was 16 years old.  

 MHP: Well, let’s talk about that. What, how did that come about that you started 

organizing these protests?  

 GKB: [00:37:52] It just happened. My father was an activist, as I have described, and my 

best friend was named Toby Fitch, Milton F. Fitch Jr., who I will meet with later today, and his 

father, Milton F. Fitch Sr., and his mother Cora Whitted Fitch, were all activists in their own 

ways in the community. And so it was just kind of expected of us that we would, we would 

continue that tradition. My father, being a Black professional, did not depend on the white 

community for his economic survival. He had no white patients. His patients were Black. My 

mother worked in a, taught in a Black school, but the Board of Education, which was white, paid 

her salary. So my mother was in a little bit more precarious, sensitive position than was my 

father. But yes, we, I started the civil rights marches in my community around 1962. Yes, 1962. 

We started, Toby Fitch and I started it. And we would lead demonstrations at the movie theaters. 

We had four theaters. Two were totally segregated. The other two, The Colony and Drake 

Theaters, allowed African Americans to go into the balcony, but not on the lower level. $0.10 for 

the balcony, $0.15 for the lower level. And so we protested discrimination at the movie theaters. 



19 
 

We went to the white recreation center that had been built in 1955 as a result of the referendum 

that I referenced, tried to gain admission to the swimming pool. And we were, we were not 

allowed to go in. Went to the basketball court at the recreation center. They put chains on the 

door and wouldn’t let us in. And so we were 16 years old at the time. [00:39:49] When we turned 

17, it was 1963. That was time for the March on Washington. My dad threw me in the car and 

we drove to Washington, D.C., went to the March on Washington in August of 1963, and I came 

back and I was really reinvigorated then to do even more. 1964 came along. We decided to 

integrate a white church, the First Baptist Church, and at two minutes to eleven on Sunday 

morning, we walked into a white church and we walked down front and sat. And I have people in 

the community who remember that, white people.  

 MHP: How many of you? 

 GKB: Four, I would guess. I think it was probably four. Joanne Coble, Grova Bridges, 

Toby Fitch and myself. It might have been one or two more. But the lady that we sat in front of 

became a friend of mine because she worked at the courthouse. I was a judge years later, and she 

would often mention that when we came in church that day, we sat right in front of her. Some 

left church. Not many, some left church, but most stayed. And Reverend Bussey, B-u-s-s-e-y, 

Reverend Bussey preached a powerful sermon that day on love, and that was very appropriate. 

And so finally we went back to the swimming pool, and I’m through with it after this, at least the 

swimming pool part, they then turned off the water rather than let us into the pool. And the head 

of the recreation department pulled me to the side and said, George, I know it’s just a matter of 

time before the civil rights bill passes, but if you would just wait until the civil rights bill passes 

and wait until Raleigh integrates its swimming pools, then I would feel comfortable letting you 

in. And on reflection, that wasn’t a bad — it was a statement of conciliation, of reckoning, 



20 
 

recognizing that it was going to happen. And so when I graduated from high school and Toby 

Fitch graduated from high school, we went off to Durham and went to college. And we did more 

of this in Durham than we did — I can’t speak for Toby, I’ll speak for myself. I did more in 

terms of activism than I did in my studies in college. I mean, I did both, but it was probably out 

of balance. I probably should have done 90% studies and, you know, 10% activism, but it was 

the other way around.  

 MHP: So you went to Durham, you were at North Carolina Central — 

 GKB: Yes. 

 MHP: For undergraduate studies. 

 GKB: [00:42:28] Yeah. Did voter registration drives. Got involved with the Duke 

employees who were on strike, you know, for better wages. Yeah.  

 MHP:  So it says here in March 1968, when you were still at North Carolina Central, you 

organized the voter registration march from Raleigh to Wilson.  

 GKB: Yes.  

 MHP: Is that right? Can you tell us a little bit about that, just like where that idea came 

from to do that type of march, how it was planned, what the day was like?  

 GKB: Thank you for reminding me of that.  

 MHP: [laughs] Did other student support you? Like just kind of tell us about that whole 

thing — 

 GKB: Yes, yes, yes. 

 MHP: And as you remember the day itself, some details of the day.  

 GKB: [00:43:08] Toby Fitch and I came up with this bright idea, it was more me than 

Toby, came up with this bright idea that we needed to do something radical. The Voting Rights 



21 
 

Act had passed in 1965. The Voting Rights Act removed the literacy tests. A lot of people don’t 

remember that. Or don’t know it. Not only did it create the opportunity to bring a lawsuit as 

Legal Defense Fund has done for many years, but it also removed the barrier called the literacy 

test. Many African Americans did not believe the literacy test was no longer. And so we were 

having difficulty getting them to register to vote. So in 1968, a lady named Eva Clayton from 

Warren County, who was a young mother of four and a wife, her husband would later become 

one of my best friends. Eva Clayton decided to run for Congress in the 2nd Congressional 

District, which included Wilson County. She knew she could not win, but it was about 

energizing and stimulating African Americans to want to get involved. And then there was an 

African American dentist from Charlotte who was a family friend, Dr. Reginald Hawkins. 

Doctor Hawkins and my father were very good friends. Decided, Hawkins decided to run for 

governor in 1968. So you’ve got two people, two prominent African Americans running for high 

profile offices, Clayton for Congress, Hawkins for governor. And there was electricity in the air. 

So Fitch and I came to the conclusion that what we could do as youngsters was to do something 

crazy just to make people stop and listen, think and listen and to act. [00:45:03] We said, we’re 

going to walk from Durham to Wilson.  

 MHP: That’s a long walk.  

 GKB: And we figured it out. So that’s why we shortened it from Raleigh to Wilson. 

[laughs] And so we said, well, we would leave the state capital and I guess it would have been 

March of six, 1968. It was before King died. We left the state capital on a Tuesday morning. We 

walked to Wendell, North — I think it was about 15 of us, and I have a picture of it. I’ll share it 

with you. We walked to Wendell and we overnighted in a church on the floor. The next morning 

we arose and we walked to Middlesex. Walked all day. We had some police protection. I had 



22 
 

gone to the highway patrol and talked to Colonel Speed and Major Guy, G-u-y, was his name. 

Colonel and Major, talked to them about police protection. They said they weren’t going to 

protect us, but they did. They did. They did. When we got out on the highway, there were 

highway patrol officers everywhere. They didn't want us to get killed on that highway and have 

them, our blood on their record, you know. And so the next night we went into Middlesex. We 

slept on the floor of another church. And the third day we walked into Wilson. The Wilson 

Police Department met us at the city limit lines, and we walked to the Wilson County 

Courthouse. During those days, you had to be 21 years of age to register to vote, not 18. So we 

were, I had not quite reached my 21st birthday, but I was going to be 21 by the time of the 

election. So we went to the statutes, the general statutes, and found out that even though I was 

20, I could still — Fitch had already turned 21. But since I was upcoming, I got, we went to the 

courthouse and became registered voters. Not only did we become registered voters, but 

hundreds of African Americans all across the 2nd Congressional District were inspired by our 

gutless act of walking Raleigh to Wilson. They became registered voters as well. Hawkins and 

Clayton lost the election in 1968, but voter registration doubled. [00:47:32] During the voter 

registration, during the campaigns of Clayton and Hawkins, they invited Dr. Martin Luther King, 

Jr. to come to Wilson to conduct a voter registration drive. King was going to fly into, on a 

private plane into Charlotte, then he was going to fly to Wilson and conduct a voter registration 

drive in front of the Black community center called Reid Street Community Center. He 

scheduled his visit for April 4th, 1968. He telegrammed, he had been invited by Milton Fitch 

Senior, my friend Toby’s, his father, who was the campaign manager for Eva Clayton. Let me 

throw that in. King sent a telegram to Mr. Fitch Senior three days before his scheduled visit. I’ve 

got newspaper articles of it, expressing regrets that he couldn’t come because he had to go to 



23 
 

Memphis, Tennessee, to assist the garbage workers there with their strike. And the world knows 

what happened there. But the day that King was assassinated was the very day he was due in 

Wilson to conduct a voter registration drive. And so what we were doing in Durham, we were 

simply, it was simply an extension of what we had started in Wilson. And after King is killed in 

April of [19]68, and Fitch and I go to his funeral.  

 MHP: [00:49:00] And before that, let me ask you, when you heard the news, how did 

you hear the news about his assassination? What was that like for you all?  

 GKB: Glad you asked that. Adam Clayton Powell, you recognize that name, was in 

Durham, lecturing at Duke University. He had been removed from Congress because of a long 

story, but he had been removed from Congress and he was in demand on college campuses to 

lecture. And so Adam Powell was invited to Duke to give a lecture. He invited, Powell invited 

student leaders from NCCU [North Carolina Central University]. The U wasn’t on it back then. 

It was NCC. No, it was NCCU by the time, 1968. NCCU, he invited student leaders from the 

campus to come to his hotel room to talk to him about stuff. We went to his room at the Hilton 

hotel right across, on Erwin Road, right across from Duke University. We sat in his suite for a 

couple of hours and we talked and then Powell said, Look, I’ve got to go to lecture, so why don’t 

you all go on over to the auditorium? I'll be over shortly. We went over to Duke. We sat in the 

audience and it was time for the program to start. And it didn’t start. And after about 30 minutes, 

someone came on stage and said, Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please. Sorry 

for the delay, but Congressman Powell has taken ill and has been rushed to the hospital at Duke 

Hospital. We said, wait a minute, we just left him 30 minutes ago, 45 minutes ago. He was 

perfectly fine. What in the world happened? And so they said, the evening is canceled. We will 

reconvene on a date, on a date to be determined. So we left. At that time, I don’t know if I 



24 
 

mentioned it to you earlier in the interview, but at that time I was also working at Duke Hospital 

as an orderly. I needed some income because I wanted to buy a car and I worked as an orderly at 

Duke Hospital in what was called the equipment room. [00:53:04] And so I had, my face was 

well known to everybody who worked at Duke Hospital because I was an orderly. I was on all 

the floors. I worked 32 hours a week, from 2 to 8 at night, 2 to, 4 to 8, 4 to 10 at night I would 

work. And so I went out to the hospital looking for Adam Clayton Powell. And I walked in and I 

said, Is Congressman Powell here? And they said, “Yeah, he’s up on the second floor in CCU.” 

CCU was a cardiac care unit. I went up and talked to them. And you didn’t have privacy back 

then. [laughs] People, nurses said, “No, he doesn’t have a heart problem.” But we put him in a 

cardiac room because they have TV monitors and we can monitor the movement in the room. 

Found out that he had had an anxiety attack and had had a meltdown right after we left the room. 

So I went in the room and Powell says, How did you get in here? And I said, Sir, I work here. He 

said, Well, get me out of here. I said Congressman, I don’t have that authority. I can't do that. He 

said, You’ve got to get me out of here. There's a conspiracy to do harm to African American 

leaders, and I can’t be in here. I said sir, I can't help you. Well, fast forward two days later, I get 

a call that Congressman Powell has secretly left the hospital and was at the home of Dr. Cook on 

Lawson Street in Durham, right across the street from North Carolina Central University. Dr. 

Cook was a friend of Adam Powell. And so Toby Fitch and I rushed over to Dr. Cook’s house, 

went in, and there was Congressman Powell, and he said, “You wouldn’t get me out of the 

hospital. But I got out.” He said, “Now I want you to, to protect me.” Maybe I shouldn’t give all 

this detail, but at this point in my life, I've got to, I’ve got to tell it all. So we went out and got 

some guns. Toby Fitch and I got some, got a gun. And we came back. And with three or four 

other students, we, we paraded the perimeter of that house all night long protecting Adam 



25 
 

Clayton Powell. The next day, Mrs. Cook rushed out of the house and said, “Boys, boys, boys, 

come over here. Come over here for a minute. Martin Luther King has just been shot.” Said, 

“What?” Said, “Martin Luther King has just been shot.” We’re standing on the corner right in 

front of MacDougall Gymnasium and the Health Sciences building right across the street from 

Dr. Cook. [00:54:06] We are standing there on the corner. Mrs. Cook goes back in the house. 

She comes back 10 minutes later. Tears running down her cheek. “Dr. King is dead. Dr. King has 

died.” And then we started crying. Because I had seen Dr. King at the March in Washington. I 

had seen Dr. King on November 22nd, 1962, in Rocky Mount, where he gave a speech here in 

Rocky Mount. I was on the front row with my father. So that’s where I was when King was 

assassinated, remember, it’s etched in my memory very vividly, standing there on the corner. 

And so I go back into the house. King is, I mean, Adam Powell is devastated. And he said, “I 

told you, I told you there was conspiracy. There is a conspiracy to kill Black leaders. I want to 

leave.” And he told his chief of staff, who was there with him to book me a flight to Bimini.  

 MHP: Is that in the Bahamas?  

 GKB: Yes. He has, had a private home in Bimini. It was years before I found out it was 

nothing but a fishing hut. I thought it was a palatial home, but it was just a little hut. And so his 

chief of staff was on the telephone making reservations for a private plane to take him to Bimini. 

And they arranged the flight, and they looked at me and said, “Do you have a car?” I said, “Yes.” 

“Would you take me to the airport?” “Yes.” I put Adam Clayton Powell in the back seat of my 

car. He sat in the center. He was smoking a cigarette, a long cigarette. He was smoking. His chief 

of staff was on this side. Toby Fitch was in the front with me. Somebody else was on the other 

side. And I drove him out to Raleigh-Durham Airport and we went in this private entrance to go 

into the general aviation section and there was a twin engine plane sitting there waiting for him. 



26 
 

We took him out of the car. The engines were revving. We put him — well, they weren’t revving 

in the beginning. We put him on the plane, closed the door, the blades started turning. We were 

running back to the car and Toby’s gun fell out of his pocket. And shot him. He’ll tell you the 

story. Yeah, I guess we went years without talking about it. But the gun discharged and shot 

Toby in the back part, let’s put it that way. We went to Dr. Cook’s house where we had just left. 

Dr. Cook was a physician. He was the chief of staff at Lincoln Hospital in Durham. And Dr. 

Cook arranged for Fitch to go to Lincoln Hospital and have the bullet removed. So that’s where I 

was when Martin Luther King Jr. was [assassinated] — and those are the circumstances.  

 MHP: [00:57:06] This is so memorable. There’s no way you couldn’t remember.  What a 

story. 

 GKB: And then Toby and I — then I quit my job at Duke Hospital, and Toby — because 

they wouldn't give me leave to go to King’s funeral. And I, Toby and I loaded up the car. We 

went to Atlanta, Georgia. We went to Ebenezer Church, and we were standing in front of the 

church when Bobby Kennedy drove up with John Lewis. They made us step back so they could 

get through. And there was Bobby Kennedy and John Lewis, and they walked in the church. And 

then one of the men working at the church came over to Fitch and I and said, “You all go to 

North Carolina Central University, don’t you? Are you Butterfield, Fitch?” We said, “Yeah, how 

do you know us?” And he gave us some reason he knew us. He says, “Come on, I can't get you a 

seat in the church, but I'll let you view the body.” We went to the side steps of Ebenezer Church, 

went up the steps, went into the sanctuary and walked down and looked at Martin Luther King in 

the casket. Turned around and went back out to the front of the church. And then when the 

funeral was over, we marched over to Morehouse College and and participated in the ceremonies 

there at the college. And that’s where I met Julian Bond for the first time. Yeah. And then went 



27 
 

back to college, finished my final exams. This would have been May. Finished final exams. And 

by this time Ralph Abernathy had taken up the mantle and King was moving from civil rights to 

poverty. That was his thrust, civil rights to poverty. And he had organized a Poor People’s 

Campaign in Washington, D.C., or at least in northern Virginia. [00:59:05] And they created 

what was called Resurrection City. And so I came up with this bright idea that when final exams 

are over, I’m going to Washington, D.C., I’m going to join Resurrection City with Ralph 

Abernathy. I went there, couldn’t find Abernathy, but they told me to go into City Hall at 

Resurrection City, and there was a young man named Jesse Jackson. And I told Jesse Jackson 

that I was there to, to help. And he made me the clerk at City Hall. It’s kind of humorous now 

that I look back on it. Jesse and I became friends. We are, his children and I are friends. And day 

two on the job, I called home. And my parents said, “Come home right now.” I said, “No, no, no, 

no. I cannot leave Resurrection City.” “You have been drafted into the Army. Come home now.” 

I went home. I was very fortunate during those days to have a car. Most students did not have a 

car. I had an automobile. I rushed home. They showed me the letter where I had been drafted 

into the army. Greetings from the President of the United States of America. You are hereby 

commanded to report to begin service in the US Army on June 7th, 1968. I said to my parents, 

"This has got to be a mistake. I have another year left in college.” We went to the home of Mr. 

D.H. Coley. There was a draft board of either three or five people and one African American on 

the draft board. His name was D.H. Coley. David Coley, friend of the family. Lived two blocks 

from us. Went to D.H. Coley’s house, and my father said, “There’s got to be a mistake. My son 

is in college.” And Mr. Coley said, “Butter, he called him Butter, Butterfield, called him. Said 

Butter, they want that boy off the street. Said, they have drafted him. You know, they, they’re 

going to ship him out. They’re going to get him out of here.” And my dad said, “Well, that’s 



28 
 

wrong.” And Mr. Coley said, “I know it’s wrong, but that’s just the way it is.” [01:01:15] Went 

back home, told my mother. My mother was in tears. My dad called me in the living room and 

said, “I know you don’t like it. We don't like it. Go in the army, serve your country. I did it in 

World War I. It will make you a better man. And get out of the army, come back, finish school, 

and go ahead and chase your dreams in life.” And on June the 7th, 1968, I reported to the 

Trailways bus station in Wilson, boarded a bus with quite a few other people. And we were 

shipped off to Fort Bragg to begin two years in the United States Army. As I was packing my 

belongings to go to Fort Bragg, there was a newsbreak on TV that Bobby Kennedy had been 

assassinated in Los Angeles, had been shot in Los Angeles. And on the morning that I was 

leaving, he was pronounced dead. And so when I got to Fort Bragg, got off the bus, Bobby 

Kennedy’s service was on television, the news break. And I wanted to go in and look at it and 

they wouldn’t let me do it. So I never had a chance to mourn the shooting and the assassination 

of Bobby Kennedy. I later met his grandchildren. His nephew Patrick is a friend of mine. His 

grandson Joseph is a friend of mine. We all served together in Congress. I told them this story 

many times. And so I spent two years in the Army and was discharged under, a couple of months 

early. That’s a long story, but it was under honorable condition. They allowed, they wanted me 

to go back to school, and so I was discharged on March 24th, 1970 in order to resume my 

education. Did not go to Vietnam. I spent my whole one and three-fourths years at Fort Bragg, 

North Carolina, as a personnel specialist. Came back to Durham, finished college, and then got 

married in August of 1971. [01:03:26] And began law school on September 1st, 1971, as a 

newlywed. My wife was a teacher in the school, public schools of Durham. I was a law student 

at North Carolina Central. Three years later, I graduated from law school and had several offers 

to do several things. I had become an intern in the prosecutor’s office in Durham. It was called 



29 
 

the third year Practice Rule. It was a brand new thing for North Carolina. And I was assigned to 

the DA’s office in Durham. Nine other students were assigned to D.A. offices throughout the 

state, but my assignment was in Durham, and my boss, the solicitor, the district attorney, was 

named Anthony Brannon. Brannon and I became friends. He later became Judge Brannon. But 

he allowed me to work at his in his office. And so when I graduated from law school, Mr. 

Brannon wanted me to stay with the prosecutor’s office. I refused to do it. Why? I wanted to go 

back home where it all started, and I wanted to shake up the community just like my dad wanted 

to shake up the community when he came here, came to Wilson. And so I came back to Wilson 

with the full intention of practicing law. I didn’t have making money in mind. I should have, but 

had no profit motive. I just wanted to get into the community and just turn it upside down and 

make life better for people that I cared about. So, and I also wanted to bring a lawsuit against the 

city of Wilson for what they had done to my father in 1957. So came back and set up a law 

practice, failed the bar the first time. [01:05:20] Second time I took the bar I passed it. And Toby 

Fitch and I started the law firm of Fitch, Butterfield and Sumner. Sumner was one of our 

classmates in law school. And we started a law firm and did very well. Not financially. We paid 

the bills, but we didn’t get rich. But we practiced law and we made a difference in the 

community and we established ourselves as leaders and our credibility became platinum. And 

I’m enjoying the platinum status of my reputation even to this day. And as I told someone a few 

days ago, I may have some enemies in this community. I’m certain that I do. I just don’t know 

who they are [laughs]. Because, because the people that I served — first of all, that my parents 

served, that I served as a young lawyer, then I got elected judge. I didn’t even go into that. Spent 

15 years on the bench. You know, my years in the courtroom, the way I treated African 

American defendants in my courtroom, I didn’t break the law, but I took each case individually 



30 
 

and took my time with the case and made a difference. And I hear that every time I come home 

and get out into the community and the people now who think so much of me, and I’m honored 

that they do, these are the grandchildren and the great grandchildren of people that my parents 

touched. These are also the children and the individuals themselves that I touched in my law 

practice and my judicial career. And these people are getting older. I’m getting older. These 

people are getting older now. And it’s not uncommon for me to go to a church or to a restaurant 

and somebody come straight to my table and tells me a story about what I did or what my family 

did, my father did, my mother did. [01:07:21] I stopped at a at a grocery store between Raleigh 

and Wilson a couple of years ago. I guess it was the Food Lion in Knightdale and a lady came 

rushing over to me and she said, “Are you Mr. Butterfield?” I said, “Yes.” Said, “Your mother 

taught me in the second grade, and she used to bring your clothes, your old clothes, and give 

them to my brother. And my family was poor. We couldn’t afford clothes. And your mother 

would bring your clothes and give them to my family to help the males, the boys in my family.” 

And so I’m benefiting from all of that. I’m now 76 years of age. I’ve served 15 years, first 12 

years as a lawyer, 15 years as a judge, 18 years in Congress, two years in the military. You put it 

all together. That adds up to 47 years, as I recall. And I've been on this battlefield for a long time. 

And the struggle continues, but in a different way.  

 MHP: So that brings me to LDF. So you have been involved with LDF and its work. 

When did you first know about, before you became involved with any of their work, when did 

you learn about the kind of work that they did? And then how did you get involved with —  

 GKB: [01:08:45] I remember when there was a legal challenge to the NAACP’s tax 

exempt status years ago because the Legal Defense Fund and the NAACP — let me take that 

back. The NAACP did the litigating. They did the litigating in the city council case in Wilson. 



31 
 

They did the litigating in Briggs v. Elliott in South Carolina. They did the litigating in the 

interstate commerce cases in Richmond and Little Rock and all across the country. It was the 

NAACP that was, and Thurgood Marshall and Spottswood Robinson, and the list goes on and 

on. They had to separate. The legal component of the NAACP had to be separate and apart from 

the organization itself. The 501(c)(3). They separated. And I kind of remember that, didn’t fully 

understand it, didn’t really get it till I got in law school. But LDF was then established and 

began, you know, litigating all across the country. Well, in 1981, I’m having lunch with Fitch, 

Fitch’s father, Frank Jones, who recently passed a few months ago, another man named George 

Leach. We were having lunch one day at a Chinese restaurant in Wilson, it was a brand new 

restaurant to the community. We’d never had a Chinese restaurant in town. Everything was meat 

and potatoes and barbecue. But we were at this Chinese restaurant and I was saying to the group, 

“It is just absolutely absurd that the county is nearly 40% African American and we have no 

African American on the county commissioners. [01:10:36] We’ve got this seven member board, 

all white, all male, and there’s something wrong with that.” I then mentioned to the group that 

the Voting Rights Act had been passed in 1965, and I’m not sure about the Voting Rights Act, 

but what it really means and how it can be used to effectuate change. But there has to be 

something in this new law called the Voting Rights Act that we can use to stir it up. Well, we 

returned to my office, I returned to my office and wrote a letter. Well, first of all, I called the 

Department of Justice and asked for the voting section, and a lady came to the telephone named 

Mary Ann Jackman. I said, “Miss Jackman, I’m G.K. Butterfield, I’m an attorney in Wilson, 

North Carolina. We have a county that’s nearly 40% African American. We have a county 

commission of seven, no African Americans. Every time an African American runs, they are 

defeated and we can’t win. What can we do about it?” She said, “Have you heard of Section Five 



32 
 

of the Voting Rights Act?” “I have not.” She said “Anytime an election law has been changed or 

practice or procedure has been changed and your county is a covered county, then that covered 

county must submit the change, the proposed change to us for approval. And if the county fails 

to do it, they cannot enforce the change until we approve it. Now, has your county changed 

anything since 1965?” I said “Yes. They changed from everybody being elected every four years 

to staggered terms. [01:12:42] Half were elected in two years. The other half would be elected in 

the next two years.” She said “Well, that’s called a change to staggered terms. Was that 

submitted to us for approval?” I said, “I don’t know. How would I know that?” She said, “Hold 

on a minute.” She stayed gone from the telephone for five or ten minutes and she came back, 

said, “I’ve checked our records. We have no submission from Wilson County on the change.” So 

she said, “We have also discovered that there were two other changes that you may not know 

about. The commission went from five to seven members.” I said, “You’re right.” She said, 

“Also there was another change in the in the procedures. There have been three changes since 

1965 and we have no record of any change.” She said, “Attorney, here’s what you do. Listen to 

me very carefully. You write me a letter. Mary Ann Jackman. Send it to my home. And I’ll take 

care of it.” So I wrote the following letter to her on February 3rd, 1982. And with your 

permission, I would like to read the pertinent parts of it. “Dear Miss Jackman — she is with the 

voting section of the Civil Rights Division — Dear Miss  Jackman, as discussed with you by 

telephone today, it has come to the attention of the undersigned that Wilson County, North 

Carolina, changed the method of election of county commissioners to staggered terms in March 

of 1976. The change was accomplished through a referendum that we believe was never 

submitted for pre-clearance as required by the Voting Rights Act. It has been impossible for 

Wilson County Blacks to elect a county commissioner in the past. It will now be doubly difficult 



33 
 

to do so in the future because of the staggered terms. [01:14:43] It is a proven fact that staggered 

terms lessen the chance for minorities to elect their choices for public office, and Wilson County 

is no exception. We therefore object to the new form of government for the reasons above stated 

and request the Department of Justice to intervene and cause the former method of elections to 

be restored. We are enclosing a copy of a newspaper article from February 2nd, 1982, edition of 

the local newspaper, which is self-explanatory. Thank you very much. Fitch and Butterfield, by 

G.K. Butterfield Junior.” I wrote this letter to Mary Ann Jackman. I wish I could find her today. 

I’ve tried. Miss Jackman got the letter. She put it in the records at DOJ. Sent a letter to the 

county telling the county they were in noncompliance with the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and they 

could not conduct another election until these changes had been pre-cleared. The county called 

an emergency meeting. The commissioners didn’t at first understand it, the lawyer explained it to 

them, and they put together this very large submission and much of it is over here in a container 

that I showed you before the interview. They put together all of this material, submitted it to the 

Department of Justice. We were hoping that it, that the, that the Department of Justice would 

deny the changes and make them revert to the old changes. They approved them. It was the 

Reagan years. William Bradford Reynolds was the voting chief, but he was actually a good guy. 

I mean, he did some creative things in other parts of the country. But in Wilson County, he 

approved the changes. And so that’s when I contacted Julius Chambers, my friend at the 

Chambers Ferguson law firm in Charlotte. Telephone 704-375-8461. [laughs]  

 MHP: [laughs] You haven’t forgotten that number.  

 GKB: [01:16:41] Called Julius Chambers and said, “Chambers, you’ve been hearing 

about me down here in Wilson.” He said, “Yeah. You know, my firm cannot solicit business 

under the bar rules. But if you want us to help you, we will.” I said, “What can you do to help 



34 
 

me?” He said, “Well, we can bring in the Legal Defense Fund.” I said, “Oh, the NAACP Legal 

Defense Fund.” “Yes.” He said, “I have strong connections with the Legal Defense Fund in New 

York City. Ten Columbus Circle. And Jack Greenberg, who is a Jewish friend of mine who 

heads up the Legal Defense Fund is there. I can call Jack. Napoleon Williams runs the day to day 

operations and Lani Guinier is there. And we can help you make this thing work.” I said, 

“Chambers, I don't know what I’m doing. You take the lead on it.” He said, “Okay.” So I get a 

call from Leslie Winner, who is a white female, Jewish, in the Chambers, Ferguson firm in 

Charlotte. She calls me, introduces herself to me and tells me she’s going to be working with me. 

I said, “Now, how much is this going to cost me?” She said, “Legal Defense Fund is going to pay 

everything. We just need your name. We need your reputation. We need your relationships in the 

community so we won’t be considered as outsiders. We need for you to find some plaintiffs that 

are respected in the community. You know, men and women who can be plaintiffs in the case. 

And we’re going to file a lawsuit. And we need for you to go to New York City and meet with 

Lani Guinier and Napoleon Williams.” Jumped on an airplane, flew to New York at my expense, 

went to 10 Columbus Circle, met with these people, and telling them about the county 

commissioner. I said, “But really what I’m here for, I really want you to file a lawsuit against the 

City Council for what they did to my father in 1957. [laughs] That’s why I’m really here.” They 

said, “No, we have a better case.” They said, “Wilson City Council is interesting and it reminds 

us of the Escambia County case that LDF filed. [01:18:51] The facts and circumstances are 

similar, but we think we — Escambia County, Florida. But we think we would have a better case 

against your county commission because of these three changes and because of some other legal 

issues. So we will take the case. We will take the case. We will pay for everything. We’ll provide 

the lawyers. We want you to be a cooperating attorney. That’s what we’re going to call you.” 



35 
 

And that was the agreement. And I returned to Wilson, I recruited the plaintiffs, and I’m 

ashamed to say they were all men. Should have recruited some women. Recruited all men, and 

they signed a retainer agreement. And I have a copy of that that I will share with you. And we 

filed the lawsuit. After filing the lawsuit, Chambers called me one day and said, “G.K., I know 

we filed a lawsuit, but there’s a case called Mobile v. Bolden out of Alabama that’s working 

against us.” “What do you mean, Chambers?” He said, “That case requires plaintiffs to prove 

intentional discrimination in order to win. And while I think you have a case that stinks in 

Wilson County, I’m not sure we can prove intentional discrimination.” I said, “Okay, so what are 

you suggesting, to dismiss the case?” He said, “No, I’m suggesting that we suspend it for a while 

until Senator Kennedy, Senator Biden, Senator Hatch, and Senator Dole can reach an agreement 

on reauthorization of Section Five under the Voting Rights Act. If they can reach, because 

Section Five had to be reauthorized every five, 10, 25 years. You know, if they can reach a deal 

on reauthorizing Section Five, they can throw into the deal a change in the proof required in 

voting cases from intent to results.” [01:20:54] I said, “Okay.” And Fitch and I jumped in the car, 

Fitch senior and I jumped in the car along with my lead plaintiff. I'm not sure Toby went. We 

drove to Washington, D.C. We went to the Senate chamber. We sat in the gallery looking down 

on the Senate floor, and we saw the Voting Rights Act extensions of 1982 being debated. Senator 

Helms, Senator Strom Thurmond, Senator East and others were opposed to changing the 

standard of proof from intent to results. And they were opposed to extending Section Five. And 

we witnessed the debate on the Senate floor. The usher in the Senate came over and told us that 

our time was up being in the gallery. And we begged and pleaded to let us stay longer. And we 

did. Senator Helms made this statement on the Senate floor that if this thing passes then more 

African Americans are going to get elected. Precisely so. We stipulate that. That’s what it’s all 



36 
 

about. [laughs] Well, the law, the amendments to the Voting Rights Act passed. And because of 

that, we now have a green light to go forward with what we call the Haskins case. And that’s 

when the Legal Defense Fund said, okay, we can do some other things. We’re going to go and 

challenge the method of electing legislators in North Carolina. Filed another lawsuit. I’ve got the 

date over there on a piece of paper, but found another lawsuit, Gingles v. Edmisten, challenging 

the multi-member legislative districts for the state House and state Senate. And that case became 

a seminal case in the whole country for voting rights litigation. It later became Gingles v. 

Thornburg. Edmisten was the Attorney General. He stopped being Attorney General. Thornburg 

became Attorney General. So the name went from Gingles v. Thornburg, and I became the 

spokesman for the class, the class plaintiffs in Gingles. [01:23:10] And it was my job to go to the 

to the North Carolina legislature during the debate, during the hearings on redistricting, for me to 

make the case to the legislature to break up these single member, these multi-member districts in 

favor of single member districts. And I was laughed at, at the legislature. Leslie Winter and Lani 

Guinier had prepared a huge map of what it would look like to have single member districts for 

all 120 House seats and for all 50 Senate seats. And I put this big map on display in the 

committee room of the legislature, and it was laughable to these white legislators. They could not 

imagine that this would ever happen. Well. LDF won the Gingles decision. LDF won on 

summary judgment the Haskins decision here in Wilson County. Other counties started calling 

me. Nash County, next county over. Halifax. Vance County. Granville County. Town of Enfield 

started calling me. “Attorney Butterfield, how did you do this? Can you do it for me? Can you do 

it for us, in our county?” I would call in the Legal Defense Fund and I would tell them, “I’ve got 

a case in Halifax County. It’s a good case. Would you get involved?” They would write the 

check and they would invest in the litigation. Halifax County was, well Nash County was 



37 
 

Jackson v. County of Nash. Halifax was Horace Johnson v. County in Halifax. Vance was Ellis 

v. County of Vance. Granville county was McGhee v. County of Granville. Town of Enfield was 

Bud Whitaker v. Town of Enfield. And the list goes on and on and on. But I get credit in those 

cases that I don’t deserve. I got the reputation of being the lead lawyer in these cases. [01:25:15] 

Nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, I helped answer the interrogatories, I did the 

request for admissions. I may have made some edits, you know, in some of the pleadings. But 

98% of the work — I’d say 90% of the work — 90% of the work in these voting rights cases 

belongs to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Not G.K. Butterfield. I was the local counsel. I was 

cooperating counsel. I didn’t know the body of law that we were dealing with. Lani Guinier was 

a professor, became a professor. She was a scholar, let’s put it that way. Lani was a scholar, 

Leslie a scholar. Napoleon Williams. And the list goes on and on. And I could call other names 

at LDF.  

 MHP: [01:26:02] But let me ask you about those names. Tell me a little bit more about 

them. Winner, Guinier. Just, you know, any — what were they like?  

 GKB: [01:26:10] They had passion that was unmatched. Lani was a — Lani was a 

northerner. She was a scholar. And I've read her bio. She’s deceased now. She was very 

passionate about legal issues, particularly civil rights. Leslie grew up in Asheville, North 

Carolina, as a Jewish child of a Jewish family. Very few Black people in the community. But she 

developed a passion for civil rights. And then she joined a civil rights law firm in Charlotte — 

Chambers, Ferguson, Stein, Watt, Wallace and Atkins was the name of the firm. And so, the two 

women, while different backgrounds, became colleagues, they became partners in voting rights 

litigation. And when the Gingles case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, Thurgood 

Marshall was on the court. And I came up with this bright idea that I wanted to go to the oral 



38 
 

argument, but I also wanted to be admitted to the court, to the Supreme Court on that day. And 

so, I submitted my paperwork. I was approved to come to the Supreme Court on the very day 

that Gingles was argued to the court, I was admitted to the Supreme Court bar. And Julius 

Chambers was to present me to the court. He was also making the oral argument to the court. I 

was disappointed. I never told Chambers this before he died, but I was very disappointed that 

Leslie did not make the argument to the court because she had done the heavy lifting in these 

cases. But he had the name, he had the profile. He was African American. He was connected 

with Thurgood Marshall and all of that. I can understand it. So Leslie took a backseat. Julius 

Chambers made the argument to the court. Well, Chambers came to the conclusion that he did 

not need to present me to the court, that his mind needed to be focused on this, on this 

presentation to the court. [01:28:24] And so he asked Ferguson to present me to the Supreme 

Court. So the court opened that day. The justices came in. I was sitting in a chair like this. The 

court was right in — the audience was behind me, the court was right in front of me. I was seated 

here and I’m seated directly in front of Thurgood Marshall. And I said, “If I could just go over 

and shake his hand, if I could just shake his hand.” My mother had told me that she had met him 

socially and at Hampton when she was there years later, when she had to go back and get a 

college degree. But I took the oath at the Supreme Court. Ferguson presented me to the court. 

And I had to then go back in the audience. And that’s when Chambers stood up and the solicitor 

general stood up and presented the arguments to the court and won the case. And North Carolina 

had to break up all of these multi-member districts into single member districts. And because of 

that, we went from two or three Black legislators to 20 or more in the legislature. But I give you 

all of that painful detail to reinforce the point that it was the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that 

made it happen. There were other groups. There were the Lawyers Committee. There were other 



39 
 

groups that were litigating. There was some respectful tension between the groups. But they were 

aligned. They were — the same purpose. Give an example. I brought in the Legal Defense Fund 

to do a case in Rocky Mount. The city of Rocky Mount had annexed 12 or 13 new areas into the 

city, which diluted minority voting strength by bringing in these white areas. And we wanted to 

oppose these annexations and the Legal Defense Fund got involved. [01:30:14] We found out 

that another group, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, was also getting involved. 

And so there became some tension. And so the Legal Defense Fund said, “Hey, we’ve got all the 

cases we need. You know, we don’t need to be involved in this.” So LDF backed out and 

allowed the Lawyers Committee to go forward, and they won the case. And because of that, the 

city council went from zero, to three out of seven. And today they have five out of seven on the 

city council in Rocky Mount. Okay.  

 MHP: [01:30:52] Yeah. This is perfect. Let me ask you about. I think, was one of those 

letters dealing with Haskins v. Wilson — or not one of these? I know you had one and then we 

didn’t bring one over.  

 GKB: [01:31:09] Yes, I do have another letter. I have to refresh my memory. The first 

letter was February 3rd. The second is March 18th. [reading] “Dear Julius Chambers, On 

Monday, March 15th, 1982, I met with Napoleon Williams and Lani Guinier of the Defense 

Fund, meaning the Legal Defense Fund, in their New York office concerning Watkins v. Wilson 

County. That’s when I wanted them to do the City Council case. I was most pleased with my 

reception and the concern expressed by these individuals for our flight, plight, in Wilson. I 

informed them that our problems were not limited to the county commissioners, which they had 

already agreed to do. Not limited to the county commissioners, but included the City Council as 

well. The city had in place a ward system of election for council members until 1957, when it 



40 
 

was replaced with an at-large system with the anti-single shot law. The election of my father in 

1953 as the first Black alderman triggered the 1957 change in election procedure. Needless to 

say, he was defeated. The only other Black to ever be elected was a slated candidate by a white 

interest group in 1975. He was elected again in 1979 and reelected in 1981. It is my hope that 

consideration be given to joining a section two challenge for the City Council with the section 

two and section five challenges of the county commissioner.” And that’s the one that they 

denied. The Legal Defense Fund said, “We've got a better case here than we have here.” But — 

but to complete the story, after we won the county commissioner case, I was going to sue the city 

over, the city council, with or without the Legal Defense Fund. I was just that adamant about it. 

Even if I didn’t know what I was doing, at least I’d learn something through the Haskins case. 

And the city council got wind that I was getting ready to sue them and they voluntarily changed. 

[01:33:11] They changed from seven, they’d gone from six members to seven. They changed 

from seven at-large to seven districts. They called in a consultant. Consultant drew the map, and 

before I could get the lawsuit ready, they voluntarily changed.  

 MHP: [01:33:27] So it had the impact anyway.  

 GKB: [01:33:29] Oh, sure it did. And then word got out and it was only a rumor because 

I really wasn't thinking it. But the word got out that G.K. Butterfield’s next target was the Board 

of Education. Hadn’t even thought about it. And next thing I knew, the Board of Education was 

calling an emergency meeting. I don’t know about an emergency meeting. They called a meeting 

and changed the method of electing the school board from at-large to districts. So, the school 

board districts are the same as the county commissioner districts. And because of that, we now 

have so many African Americans serving in these on these boards, it’s just heartwarming.  



41 
 

 MHP: [01:34:09] So one or two cases really can cascade into having this influence over 

many different cases.  

 GKB: [01:34:15] That is true. And a letter in the middle of the day from a lawyer who 

doesn't know what he's doing in Wilson, North Carolina, to the Department of Justice, started the 

motion, started the wheel turning. And that letter, I would argue, precipitated and triggered a 

voting rights avalanche in eastern North Carolina. Legal Defense Fund needed my credibility and 

my interest and my enthusiasm [coughs] and my relationships in order to be respected. I needed 

the Legal Defense Fund for their money. Hello, money, and their legal expertise and everything 

else that that you need to have a successful lawsuit. And so it was a marriage between my law 

firm and the Legal Defense Fund. And it was a beautiful marriage. So anytime I hear LDF, I go 

out of my way to have an interview. Yeah.  

 MHP: I'm going to ask you next about the Person County Committee on the Affairs of 

Black Citizens.  

 GKB: [01:35:24] Yeah.  

 MHP: Let’s, tell me about the Person County Committee on the Affairs of Black Citizens 

v. the County of Person, North Carolina. Let’s talk [inaudible]. 

 GKB: [01:35:37] That’s the case, that’s the case that I know the least about. And I’ll tell 

you why. Because I was running for judge. I was beginning to run for judge and I never got into 

the judicial lawsuit. I don’t think that was LDF. That was not LDF. It might have been, it was the 

NAACP, but not the Legal Defense Fund that litigated the way we elect superior court judges. 

The case was settled and that’s how I got elected to the bench. But as I was getting ready to 

become a judge, that’s when I brought the Person County case to LDF. But I was really not a 

part of it.     



42 
 

MHP: And we don’t have to talk about it.  

 GKB: Yeah. The people in Present County were friends of mine.  

 MHP: Got it.  

 GKB: But I can tell you a whole lot about the other cases. Do you have Halifax County 

on your list? 

 MHP: [01:36:25] You know, I don’t. But we want to ask you — this interview should 

definitely be driven by what you feel is a priority and what you —.  

 GKB: Halifax County.  

 MHP: [01:36:34] Let’s talk about Halifax county. 

 GKB: Horace Johnson walks into my office one day. Never heard of Horace Johnson. He 

was a Black farmer from Halifax County. Not terribly educated, but an activist for sure. Horace 

sat at my desk and said, “Lawyer, I just ran for county commissioner in Halifax County. We’ve 

never had a Black county commissioner. They stole that election from me.” “How do you 

know?” “I know it. I know they stole that election from me, and I don’t like it. And I want you to 

do something about it. You did something here in Wilson, I want you to do something about it in 

Halifax.” I said, “Well, Mr. Johnson, I don't know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what 

I can do. Let me go up there and find —” he said, “Go to the Board of Elections. You’ll see the 

ballots all out on the counter. They’re supposed to be in a box under lock and key.” Drove to 

Halifax County, walked into the Board of Elections office. And Mr. Johnson was right. All of — 

and this is the day after the election. Live ballots laying on the counter and I could actually look 

at the ballots. These are paper ballots. I could actually look at them and see the name of people 

who had been voted upon. I challenged it and they dismissed me in the in the Board of Elections 

office and just told me, have a nice day. So I came back home, came back to my office, called 



43 
 

Mr. Johnson. I said, “You’re right, you’ve got a problem. So what I’m going to do, I'm going to 

challenge the election outcome.” I didn’t bring in LDF at the time. In my own little way as a 

country lawyer, I filed a challenge to the election outcome. [01:38:18] They had a hearing before 

the county Board of Elections. There was one African American on the board, the board of 

elections, and they laughed at me. The hearing lasted for a full day. It was very hot, didn’t have 

air conditioning in the room back then, and it was sweltering hot. But we lost. Went to the state 

board of elections. We lost. I then filed something in superior court in Wake County, which was 

the law. Went before a judge in Wake County. He looked at it, threw it out, said “You don’t have 

a case.” Threw it out. Went back to my client, Mr. Johnson. I said, “Horace, you don’t have a 

case. The judge is not going to recognize it.” “What do we do?” “Well, you call in the Legal 

Defense Fund.” Called Julius Chambers. Chambers called the powers to be with LDF. They 

descended upon North Carolina. We were told to choose some plaintiffs. This time I found some 

female plaintiffs. We met. We met at the First Baptist Church in Weldon, and the whole 

community showed up. It must have been, not the whole community. Forty or 50 people showed 

up from the community. I explained to them what could be involved in a lawsuit, and I said, We 

need some volunteers. And 19 people raised their hands and those 19 people became our 

plaintiffs in Halifax County. We then litigated the case. We filed the case, and eventually, after a 

long time, finally the case was settled and the county said, “Let’s draw, you all draw a district.” 

LDF looked at me and said, “What kind of district do you want?” And the demographics of the 

county are so disorganized that it was, it was difficult to get compact African American districts 

around the county. [01:40:17] So I came up with this bright idea. Two seats ought to be on this 

side of Interstate 95, two seats on this side of Interstate 95, elected in alternate years and two 



44 
 

elected countywide at large. And the court accepted it, the county accepted it, the court accepted 

it. And that is still in effect today.  

 MHP: [01:40:41] What was that case? What is the name of the case?  

 GKB: Horace Johnson v. County of Halifax. So we drew these districts and two African 

Americans were elected to the board. Two were elected to the board initially, and now there are 

four on the board out of seven, and they’re all friends of mine. And of course, those were 

initially elected. They have passed away now. And this is a new generation of leadership. But all 

of the people of Halifax County know, the leadership knows that I drew those districts. And so 

when I ran for Congress in Halifax County, it was very heartwarming to see the support that I 

had.  

 MHP: Who were the LDF litigators that you worked with?  

 GKB: Same ones. Same ones. And then Granville and Vance County called. And I’ll 

make this explanation shorter than Halifax. They called me, did the same thing that we did in 

Halifax, had community meetings, got plaintiffs, and I filed those cases on Martin Luther King’s 

birthday, January 15th, 198[7], maybe. I walked into the clerk's office in federal court and 

dropped these two lawsuits on the same day. And LDF won both of those. Both of those. And 

then that’s when Person County came up that you made reference to a minute ago. But by this 

time, I was beginning to run for judge and I was trying to back away from controversy. [laughs] 

And so the voting rights movement has been very significant here in the state, and I’ve been very 

much a part of it and I’ve benefited from it.  

 MHP: You have done so well with this. We’re literally on our concluding questions. 

Unless there are other specific LDF cases. I'll circle back to that. So in these —  



45 
 

 GKB: [01:42:38] Can you, can you suspend the recording for just a second?   

 MHP: Yes — 

 GKB: No, I want to look at my list.  

 MHP: Yeah, yeah, that's fine. 

 GKB: Yeah.  

 JP: Just pause. 

 GKB: Just pause. 

 MHP: Or, you know what, or we can do these and then do some more cases.  

 GKB: Okay.  

 MHP: That’d be —  

 GKB: Yes. All right.  

 MHP: That’d be — let’s do that. And then we’ll do the cases. Do you need to take a sip 

of — ? So what would you want the public to know about your work with LDF that maybe they 

don’t know now? Anything you can think of? 

 GKB: [01:43:00] The world should know that the NAACP Legal Defense Fund has been 

very instrumental in transforming the political systems in North Carolina and throughout the 

South. Had it not been for LDF and its brilliant lawyers and its financial resources, much of 

which was made possible by white people, and white corporations and white philanthropists. 

Had, were it not for the resources and the talent of the Legal Defense Fund and the activist nature 

of the organization, we would not have had these monumental changes in election law and 

procedure and election systems. Had we not changed the election systems, we would have still 

been backwards. We would have still been unable to fully enforce the Voting Rights Act as it 

was intended. And the LDF has been at the table. Not just in the court room, but they’ve been at 



46 
 

the table when negotiations, political negotiations and policy negotiations were taking place with 

the Senate and with the House of Representatives and with thought leaders and think tanks all 

across the country. I was chairman of the Elections committee in Congress, the Elections 

subcommittee in Congress. And my desire to want to do that is obvious, why I would want to be 

the chairman of the Elections subcommittee. Plus, Nancy Pelosi wanted me to do it. But LDF 

was part of our work in Congress, testified before my committee. Whenever I would hold field 

hearings in other parts of the country, LDF would send witnesses to testify and help make a 

congressional record. And so all of that to say, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund has been the 

catalyst in transforming the political systems of the South, and we are grateful for it and we are 

better off because of it.  

 MHP: [01:45:06] So in your opinion now, we’re in some different times, but you’ve seen 

a lot of challenging times. In your opinion, how can LDF continue to do meaningful work in the 

21st century?  

 GKB: It’s very difficult now because of the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2013 striking 

down Section Four of the Voting Rights Act which defines which jurisdictions should be covered 

by Section Five. But because of housing patterns and so many other factors, it’s hard to, to even 

draw districts. But the greater point is that you have to have a factual basis in order for the 

federal government to supersede state law. I’m talking legalese now. This is something that non-

lawyers really don’t relate to, many of them. Many do. And so in order for federal law to 

overcome, supersede state law, have to have a significant factual basis, not just one or two 

incidents of discrimination, but a pattern of discrimination. And it’s kind of hard to find. And so 

when Senator Manchin and others say that it should be a nationwide Section Five, that is, that is 

disingenuous. You cannot have, you cannot have the federal government telling a county in 



47 
 

Wyoming, you’ve got to send us your election changes before they take place. It has to be 

targeted to an area and it has to be based on past, recent past discrimination. So all of that to say 

that I’m not terribly optimistic that Section Five will ever return. And I hope I’m wrong. Section 

Two, the other part of the Voting Rights Act, gives minority communities, Black communities, 

Hispanic communities, Asian-American communities, AAPI we now call it, give them the right 

to litigate any grievances against an election system or practice. [01:47:14] Section Two is under 

attack. Some of the opposition is arguing that Section [Two] should only be available for the 

Department of Justice to bring a lawsuit and not individual plaintiffs. So that debate is taking 

place right now. There’s also legislation, not legislation, a case pending in the U.S. Supreme 

Court that will take the standard of proof from discriminatory result, which is what came in 

1982, back to intentional discrimination. And if LDF and other civil rights groups, voting rights 

groups are made to prove cases based on intentional discrimination, then there would be fewer 

outcomes and fewer lawsuits that are filed. Now remember, remember to litigate a Section Two 

case in federal court — when I came along, it was hundreds of thousands of dollars. Today, it’s 

millions of dollars. And so the Legal Defense Fund has got to apportion its resources to the cases 

and for the cases that are most significant.         

MHP: And my next question. I think this brings everything full circle. What does the 

Legal Defense Fund mean to you?  

 GKB: [01:48:37] When my father came along, there were certain things that were, that 

were very precious and sentimental to him. One was Shaw University. The other was Meharry 

Medical College. Another was the NAACP. Those things were just precious and sentimental and 

personal to my father. To me it is the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that I endear myself to, that’s 

important in my development. Because had it, were it not for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund 



48 
 

litigation and its resources and its innovative ideas and thoughts, we would not have been able to 

change much in our political systems. Without changing political systems, then you don’t change 

economic opportunities and you don’t change other things that are important to minority groups. 

And so the Legal Defense Fund is near and dear to my heart. And when you called to say that I 

want to interview you, I gladly accepted. I’m glad we could agree on a date and time. And I’ve 

accumulated a vast amount of documents and information and, including pictures, that I’m 

delighted to share with LDF on the condition that it is preserved. And I’m confident that it will 

be preserved, preserved for posterity, because I cannot take these papers and pictures with me to 

heaven. They’re going to have to stay with someone else when it’s, when it’s my time to leave. 

And so I’m delighted to be a part of this interview. And I want to thank you.  

 MHP: [01:50:29] And you’re going to look to see if there are more cases you want to 

talk about. I think we’ve hit the big ones, but more you want, the ones that are important to you, 

we want you to talk about.  

 GKB: I think I’ve covered it. Yeah. 

 MHP: I want you to drive that. But is there anything else that you want to add that my 

questions just didn’t address?  

 GKB: No, I — this is one of the better interviews that I’ve had about the subject matter, 

and I’ve —  

 MHP: This has been my favorite interview that I’ve done so far. 

 GKB: Yeah. 

 JP: It’s been great.  

 GKB: Yeah. Well, I’ve, as you can imagine, I’m in high demand, you know, with some 

groups who want to talk and help them with their research and some are better than others. Let 



49 
 

me put it that way. But your demeanor and your temperament, and you’re, obviously you 

prepared for this today. I mean, the way you’ve presented it and just let me talk, you know, 

instead of interrupting me in the middle of a thought, because sometimes a person of my age, 

you kind of lose this train of thought, you know, and if you get interrupted, it’s kind of hard, it’s 

hard to get back on track. [laughs] 

 MHP: [01:51:31] Look, at my age I know that myself.  

 GKB: Yeah, but it’s — yes. 

 MHP: But this is your story, so oral histories are really about the person’s story and I try 

to very intentionally stay out and let you have your space — 

 GKB: Well you’ve done well. 

 MHP: — to tell the story you want to tell.  

 GKB: I’ve done, I’ve done hundreds of interviews over the years and there are some 

interviewers who are better than others. And I put you in the top five percent.  

 MHP: Thank you. I’m so flattered. I think because I'm interviewing you as an oral 

historian and not as a journalist.  

 GKB: Yeah. Sure.  

 MHP: I used to be a journalist, and that’s — journalists get in the way sometimes. Here’s 

my question, though. I know this might seem like an odd question. Do you feel, are you at that 

point where you feel satisfaction when you go back to what happened to your dad — because 

that bothered you, really bothered him, right?  

 GKB: Yes.  

 MHP: Are you at that point in life where you feel like you’ve — where are you with 

that?  



50 
 

 GKB: [01:52:25] I have a sense of satisfaction that we went from no Black elected 

officials to now having Black elected officials at every level of government here in North 

Carolina. That is satisfying. Where I’m less than satisfied is that there are still challenges in the 

community. There’s still, there’s still crime. There’s still health care disparities. There’s still 

police misconduct. And there’s so many, the gun epidemic that we have in the country. There are 

so many problems that politically we have been unable to solve. We’ve had a Black president. 

We now have a Black female vice president. We have [5]8 African American members of the 

Congressional Black Caucus. We have the Governor of Maryland. And the list just goes on and 

on and on. But the needle is not moving fast enough to lift people out of poverty. And 

Congresswoman Barbara Lee talks about it all the time. Poverty is pervasive in our, in civil 

society. Homelessness is pervasive. And we’ve got to do, we have got to do more. Black elected 

officials must be challenged. Other elected officials must be challenged. We’ve got to do more to 

eradicate poverty and to eliminate health care disparities and all of the other things that are near 

and dear. Education. I don’t know what the Supreme Court is going to do with affirmative action 

and student loans and all of the other things, but we have so far to go. But I would be, I would be 

wrong to say that we have not made progress. We’ve made huge progress. But just getting 

representation is not in and of itself the panacea for the issues of our day. Yeah.   

 MHP: [01:54:20] How are we on time? I just want to make sure I — 

 JP: It is 11:45. Almost exactly. 

 MHP: Okay. And I have, only if you have it — 

 GKB: We’re good.  

 MHP: — Congressman Butterfield, I wanted to — just a quick question, but only if you 

can think of something. But this is putting you on the spot. If you can, just anything anecdotal 



51 
 

that you can recall, and it may not come to mind now, about working with Guinier or Winter? 

Anything that you think of just sort of anecdotally that you could tell us. Or any of the other 

litigators?  

 GKB: [01:54:55] Lani Guinier instructed me to go through the discovery material that 

we had asked for in the Haskins case. And Lani and Leslie had asked for every piece of paper 

that you can imagine that had been acted upon in county government. And that included the 

minutes from the hospital. The county owned the hospital. The minutes of the meeting from the 

board of trustees at the hospital. Guinier and Winter wanted the minutes of the board meetings at 

the Department of Social Services and the Health Department and the county commissioners. 

And it was a ton of information. I have it back here in a box. And they instructed me to go 

through this discovery material and to see if I could find some powerful things that could help 

make the point that there was a history of official discrimination in the county. And I spent days 

and days and days poring through this information. And one day I ran upon something that I 

often talk about. In 1964, the county opened a public hospital here in the county. They closed the 

Black hospital, which was privately owned. The Black hospital closed, it was called Mercy 

Hospital, and folded into Wilson Memorial Hospital. That was a good thing. The African 

American man who was the administrator of the Black hospital, who was loved by the white 

community and the Black community, was given a seat on the board of trustees at the new 

hospital. So you had 12 members of the board. One is African American, the other 11 are white 

men on the board of trustees. This is 1964. 1965, Medicare is enacted by Congress, Medicaid 

enacted by Congress. So now the hospital, instead of having to depend on insurance, which most 

people didn’t have, paying the bill, you’ve now got Medicare. It’s going to pay for seniors to get 

health care. And all of a sudden the floodgates of money opened up for the hospital. So the 



52 
 

hospital is finally operating in the black. [01:57:18] They are making a profit and providing good 

service. In [19]66, the following year, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare [HEW] 

came down to inspect the hospital and found out that the rooms were segregated by race. HEW 

confronted the hospital and said, “You can’t do this because the [19]64 Civil Rights Act 

prohibits discrimination when you receive federal funds. Medicare is a federal fund. Therefore, 

you are in violation of the Civil Rights Act by segregating your rooms.” Hospital’s retort was, 

“We don’t segregate our rooms intentionally. This is what people want. Black people want to be 

in Black rooms and white people want to be in white rooms. And so we haven’t done this 

officially.” HEW came back a second time and said, “We’ve talked about it and that is 

pretextual. That, that’s not going to — as we say in the South, that dog is not going to hunt. It’s 

not going to work. You’ve got to integrate your rooms.” The board called an emergency meeting 

and the Black man on the board, William Hines, is his name, was his name, made the motion to 

tell HEW to get off our backs. That this is what we want to do. It is not intentional. This is what 

the people want and to tell them to leave us alone. That we don’t discriminate. The white 

community gets the Black man on the board to make the motion to tell HEW to stop accusing us 

of discrimination. Well, HEW didn’t accept it. Rightfully. And came back down and told the 

hospital they were going to lose their funding, which meant the hospital would close. And the 

board was then forced to reconsider and to pass a resolution of nondiscrimination on the 

assignment of rooms. And because of that, rooms became, became integrated. And so I don’t 

know how we got into this, but yeah, how was your question?  

 MHP: You were telling us some different questions — 

 GKB: You said anecdotes. 

 MHP: Anecdotes of Winner and Guinier. 



53 
 

 GKB: [01:59:27] And so I found the minutes of that meeting because Guinier and 

Winner had instructed me to pore through these discovery items. And I found these minutes and 

I’ve saved them. And, because those that discriminated were not always white people. There 

were some Black people who were complicit in the discrimination, unfortunately. Yeah.  

 MHP: I think that is everything. 

[END OF INTERVIEW]