He continued his studies and performed in Boston, New Haven, and New York where he drew the attention of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Harry T. Burleigh, and Booker T. Washington. In 1903 he was invited to join the Washington [D.C.] Conservatory, and he also later taught in public schools there. In the following year he met African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor with whom he studied in London in 1906 and again in 1908-11. After performing throughout Europe he established a studio in Boston where he conducted the Victoria Concert Orchestra from 1914 until 1924.

As the director of music at West Virginia State College from 1924 to 1931 he first became interested in Haitian music and history through his friend, Professor John F. Matheus. The two men travelled to Haiti and together composed an opera based on the life of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a slave who led a revolution and became the first emperor of Haiti in the early nineteenth century; the opera was titled Ouanga, which means "voodoo charm." The work was performed in Chicago, where it won an award from the American Opera Society of Chicago. It was first produced for the stage in 1949 in South Bend, Ind., by the Burleigh Musical Association. Later the opera was performed in Philadelphia (1950) and in New York at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera House (1956).

Strongly influenced by folk music, White composed violin and orchestral work, and arranged African-American spirituals. Notable are his Symphony in D Minor, an orchestral piece entitled Elegy, the ballet score A Night in Sans Souci, and a cantata, Heritage, which was performed at the Church of the Master shortly before his death.

After living in Chicago and Elizabeth, N.J., where his first wife died, White moved to New York City in 1943, and married his second wife, Pura Belpre. In 1948 the Whites moved to 409 Edgecombe Avenue where the composer died twelve years later.