GK Butterfield was born and raised in the then- segregated city of Wilson, North Carolina. Butterfield came from a prominent African American family with a long history in North Carolina. Both of Congressman Butterfield's parents were mixed race Americans. His maternal grandfather, Joe Davis, was a child of a former slave, Judah Davis, and a white man. Congressman Butterfield's mother, Addie, taught elementary school for 48 years in some of the poorest communities in North Carolina. Mrs. Butterfield was keenly focused on making sure her students learned to read--a right that was denied to many Blacks in the South. Congressman Butterfield's father, Dr. G. K. Butterfield Sr., was an immigrant from Bermuda. As a Graduate of Meharry Dental College, Dr. Butterfield practiced dentistry for 50 years in the poor, segregated community of East Wilson. In the late 1940s, Dr. Butterfield helped found the Wilson Branch of the NAACP, in order to register Black voters in the county. In 1953, Congressman Butterfield’s father became the first African American elected to the city council in Wilson, and the first Black elected official in eastern North Carolina since Reconstruction.