‘Unimaginable.’ Stretch of NC highway named in honor of retired Black congressman
When the N.C. Board of Transportation named part of Interstate 95 in his honor Thursday, former Congressman G.K. Butterfield Jr. took note of the date, Feb. 1.
It was 64 years ago to the day that four Black students at N.C. A&T sat down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, starting a sit-in that became a watershed in the Civil Rights Movement. Butterfield drew a connection between his career as a lawyer, judge and congressman and the bravery and determination of those students and others in the movement.
“I am grateful for this day, a day that would have been unimaginable when I began my public service many years ago,” Butterfield, 76, told board members, before noting the anniversary of the sit-in.
“Four students sat in the lunch counter so that years later first-class citizenship would become the law of the land for all Americans,” he said. “And so in many respects today is very, very special to me.”
Butterfield is a lifelong resident of Wilson County. But the Congressman G.K. Butterfield Highway will cover an 8.5-mile stretch of I-95 between U.S. 158 in Roanoke Rapids and the Virginia state line.
Butterfield noted that he had numerous family and personal connections to Halifax and Northampton counties where the highway runs, starting with his mother’s work as a teacher there after she graduated from Shaw University. As a civil rights lawyer, Butterfield said he represented numerous clients in the area, including the plaintiffs in a voting rights case that eliminated a system of countywide voting for commissioners that had prevented Black candidates from winning election.
Butterfield later heard hundreds of cases in the two counties as a Superior Court judge, before he ran for the 1st Congressional District seat as a Democrat.
“In 2004, voters in these counties — in very large numbers, I would say — voted to send me to Washington where I remained for 18 long years,” he said. “It was my joy to represent these counties and bring millions of dollars into their communities.”
Butterfield never had a close race in nine elections in the 1st Congressional District, which covers the northeastern corner of the state but also included parts of Durham.
State lawmakers redrew the district, now represented by Rep. Don Davis, in 2021 to eliminate Durham, but it still includes Butterfield’s hometown of Wilson and the stretch of I-95 that will bear his name.
