"George Washington Carver was born about sixty years ago of slave parents on the Missouri farm of Moses Carver (whose name, after the fashion of slaves, the mother of the son bore). Carver's earliest recollections were the death of his father and the stealing of himself and his mother by a band of raiders in the last year of the Civil War. Moses Carver, whom George W. Carver remembers as his kindly master, sent a rescuing party on horseback liberally provided with funds to buy their release, but when the searchers overtook the marauders in Arkansas, Mary Carver, the mother, had disappeared and was never again heard from. Little George was found grievously ill with whooping cough. A race horse valued at $300 was given in exchange for him and he was returned to the Missouri farm where he was reared by his master.
Like Booker T. Washington, Carver became the rich possessor of one book, an old blue-backed speller. This he soon learned by heart, as he mastered his letters; but opportunity did not seek him out. He was forced to accept the limitations of the spelling book until he was ten years old, at which time he found his way to a Negro school eight miles away. Lodging in the cabins of friendly Negroes, sleeping in open fields or in a hospitable stable, he continued his studies for a year, keeping ever close to the soil. After graduating from this school, he set out toward Kansas, "the home of the free." A mule team overtook him a day's journey out and took him into Fort Scott where his definite schooling was begun. For nine years he worked as a domestic servant, studying day and night as his employment permitted. He specialized in laundry work and when he next moved forward he was able by the careful management and utmost frugality to complete a high-school course at Minneapolis, Kan.
After graduating from high school, Carver entered Iowa State College. Along with his studies here much of his time was given over to the management of a laundry out of which he earned enough money to meet his school expenses. Completing the work for his Bachelor's and Master's degrees, he was graduated and made a member of the faculty in charge of the greenhouse, the bacteriological laboratory, and the department of systematic botany."
TITLE: [George Washington Carver, full-length portrait, seated on steps (bottom center), facing front, with staff], CALL NUMBER: LOT 13164-C, no. 103 [P&P]
REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-DIG-ppmsca-05633 (digital file from modern print), No known restrictions on publication.
Digital ID: ppmsca 05633 Source: digital file from modern b&w print Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-ppmsca-05633 (digital file from modern print) Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA Retrieve higher resolution JPEG version (147 kilobytes)
MEDIUM: 1 photographic print. CREATED, PUBLISHED: [ca. 1902], CREATOR: Johnston, Frances Benjamin, 1864-1952, photographer.
NOTES: Title devised by Library staff. Reference copy (modern print) in BIOG FILE - Carver, George Washington. Forms part of: Booker T. Washington Collection (Library of Congress). Original negative may be available: LC-J694-159.
 | Works published prior to 1978 were copyright protected for a maximum of 75 years. See Circular 1 "COPYRIGHT BASICS" PDF from the U.S. Copyright Office. Works published works before 1923 (THIS IMAGE) are now in the public domain. |
MARC Record Line 540 - No known restrictions on publication.
Credit Line: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [reproduction number, LC-DIG-ppmsca-05633]
George Washington Carver
George Washington Carver (July 12, 1864 – January 5, 1943) was an American botanical researcher and agronomy educator who worked in agricultural extension at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, teaching former slaves farming techniques for self-sufficiency.
To bring education to farmers, Carver designed a mobile school. It was called a Jesup Wagon after the New York financier, Morris Ketchum Jesup, who provided funding. In 1921, Carver spoke in favor of a peanut tariff before the House Ways and Means Committee. Given racial discrimination of the time, it was unusual for an African-American to be called as an expert. Carver's well-received testimony earned him national attention, and he became an unofficial spokesman for the peanut industry. Carver wrote 44 practical agricultural bulletins for farmers.
In the post-Civil-War South, an agricultural monoculture of cotton had depleted the soil, and in the early 1900s, the boll weevil destroyed much of the cotton crop. Much of Carver's fame was based on his research and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes. He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops as both a source of their own food and a cash crop. His most popular bulletin contained 105 existing food recipes that used peanuts. His most famous method of promoting the peanut involved his creation of about 100 existing industrial products from peanuts, including cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, gasoline and nitroglycerin. His industrial products from peanuts excited the public imagination but none was a successful commercial product. There are many myths about Carver, especially the myth that his industrial products from peanuts played a major role in revolutionizing Southern agriculture.
Carver's most important accomplishments were in areas other than industrial products from peanuts, including agricultural extension education, improvement of racial relations, mentoring children, poetry, painting, religion, advocacy of sustainable agriculture and appreciation of plants and nature. He served as a valuable role model for African-Americans and an example of the importance of hard work, a positive attitude and a good education. His humility, humanitarianism, good nature, frugality and lack of economic materialism have also been widely admired.
One of his most important roles was that the fame of his achievements and many talents undermined the widespread stereotype of the time that the black race was intellectually inferior to the white race. In 1941, "Time" magazine dubbed him a "Black Leonardo," a reference to the white polymath Leonardo da Vinci.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article, George Washington Carver
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