He was born to former slaves in King and Queen County, Virginia. He came to Nova Scotia in 1900 after a Canadian school teacher in Baltimore, Maryland impressed him with descriptions of the province. He pictured this land as his key to freedom. He became the second black man accepted by Acadia University and the first to be later honoured with a Doctorate of Divinity. Rev. White graduated from Acadia in 1903 with an arts degree in Theology, was ordained a minister, and spent the next two years as a travelling missionary for the African Baptist Churches of Nova Scotia.