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George Washington Carver

Early Life

Early

Life

  • Born near Diamond, Missouri in January or June of 1864
  • Carver’s mother Mary was purchased when she was 13 years old
  • Kidnapped from the Carver farm, resold in Kentucky.
  • Raised with his brother by Moses and Susan Carver
  • Frail and sickly child who could not help with field work
  • Taught how to cook, mend, embroider, etc.
  • Took a keen interest in plants at a young age

Education

Education

Early

Education

Early Education and High School

  • Left the farm at 11
  • Attended an all-Black school in Neosho
  • Given broad knowledge of medicinal herbs
  • Moved to Kansas
  • Survived off of the domestic skills from his foster mothers
  • Graduated high school in 1880

College

College and Facing Rejection

  • Applied to Highland College
  • Was initially accepted at the all-white college
  • Later rejected when the administration learned he was Black
  • Encouraged to pursue a higher education
  • Enrolled in Simpson College, a Methodist school that admitted all qualified applicants

Making

History

Making History

  • Worked with famed mycologist L.H. Pammel at the Iowa State Experimental Station
  • Honed his skills in identifying and treating plant diseases
  • Earned his Master of Agriculture degree in 1896
  • Initially studied art and piano
  • Hoped to earn a teaching degree
  • Encouraged to apply to the Iowa State Agricultural School to study botany
  • Became the first African American to earn a Bachelor of Science degree
  • Impressed by Carver’s research on the fungal infections of soybean plants, his professors asked him to stay on for graduate studies

Job

Offers

Job Offers

  • Immediately received several offers after he earned his Master of Agriculture degree
  • Most attractive of which came from Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee Institute
  • Washington convinced the university’s trustees to establish an agricultural school
  • Could only be run by Carver if Tuskegee was to keep its all-Black faculty
  • Carver accepted the offer
  • Would work at Tuskegee Institute for the rest of his life

Tuskegee

Institute

Tuskegee

  • Agriculture training was not popular
  • Students saw schooling as a means to escape farming
  • Many faculty members resented Carver
  • Carver struggled with the demands of the position he held
  • Carver and Washington had a complicated relationship and would butt heads often
  • Carver would get his way when Washington died in 1915 and was succeeded by Robert Russa Moton
  • Relieved of his teaching duties except for summer school

Inventions

Inventions

  • Carver had great successes in the laboratory and the community
  • He taught poor farmers to feed hogs acorns instead of commercial feed and enrich croplands with swamp muck instead of fertilizers
  • His ideas regarding crop rotation proved to be most valuable
  • Learned that years of growing cotton had depleted the nutrients from soil, resulting in low yields
  • Nitrogen-fixing plants like peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes restored the soil
  • Invented the Jessup wagon

The

Peanut

Man

Peanut Man

  • Carver’s biggest success came from peanuts
  • Developed more than 300 products from peanuts
  • Experimented with peanut-based medicines
  • Many did not find widespread applications
  • Appeared before the Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1921, seeking tariff protection
  • His testimony did not begin well
  • He described the wide range of products that could be made from peanuts
  • Earned him a standing ovation and convinced the committee to approve a high protected tariff
  • He then became known as “The Peanut Man”

Fame

and

Legacy

Fame and Legacy

  • Carver's focus was always on helping people
  • Traveled the South to promote racial harmony
  • Traveled to India to discuss nutrition in developing nations with Mahatma Gandhi
  • Released bulletins for the public (44 bulletins between 1898 and 1943)
  • Some reported on research, many were practical
  • Offered a treatment of peanut oil massages for polio
  • No scientific evidence exists that the treatments worked
  • Carver died on January 5, 1943 at 78 years old
  • Buried next to Booker T. Washington
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