George Washington Carver

George Washington Carver (1860s^[1] – January 5, 1943) was an American agricultural scientist and inventor who promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion.^[2] He was the most prominent black scientist of the early 20th century.

While a professor at Tuskegee Institute, Carver developed techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. He wanted poor farmers to grow other crops, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes, as a source of their own food and to improve their quality of life. The most popular of his 44 practical bulletins for farmers contained 105 food recipes using peanuts. Although he spent years developing and promoting numerous products made from peanuts, none became commercially successful.

Apart from his work to improve the lives of farmers, Carver was also a leader in promoting environmentalism.^[4] He received numerous honors for his work, including the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP. In an era of high racial polarization, his fame reached beyond the black community. He was widely recognized and praised in the white community for his many achievements and talents. In 1941, Timemagazine dubbed Carver a "Black Leonardo".^[5]

Color film of Carver shot in 1937 at the Tuskegee Institute by African American surgeon Allen Alexander was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2019.^[6][7]The 12 minutes of footage includes Carver in his apartment, office and laboratory, as well as images of him tending flowers and displaying his paintings. The film was digitized by The National Archives as part of its multi-year effort to preserve and make available the historically significant film collections of the National Park Service. It can be seen on the US National Film Archives YouTube channel.

Carver was born into slavery, in Diamond Grove (now Diamond), Newton County, Missouri, near Crystal Place, sometime in the early or mid 1860s. The date of his birth is uncertain and was not known to Carver; but it was before slavery was abolished in Missouri, which occurred in January 1865, during the American Civil War. His master, Moses Carver, was a German American immigrant, who had purchased George's parents, Mary and Giles, from William P. McGinnis on October 9, 1855, for $700.^[8][1]

When George was a week old, he, a sister, and his mother were kidnapped by night raiders from Arkansas. George's brother, James, was rushed to safety from the kidnappers. The kidnappers sold the slaves in Kentucky. Moses Carver hired John Bentley to find them, but he found only the infant George. Moses negotiated with the raiders to gain the boy's return, and rewarded Bentley. After slavery was abolished, Moses Carver and his wife, Susan, raised George and his older brother, James, as their own children. They encouraged George to continue his intellectual pursuits, and "Aunt Susan" taught him the basics of reading and writing.^[9]

Black people were not allowed at the public school in Diamond Grove. George decided to go to a school for black children 10 miles (16 km) south, in Neosho. When he reached the town, he found the school closed for the night. He slept in a nearby barn. By his own account, the next morning he met a kind woman, Mariah Watkins, from whom he wished to rent a room. When he identified himself as "Carver's George", as he had done his whole life, she replied that from now on his name was "George Carver". George liked Mariah Watkins, and her words "You must learn all you can, then go back out into the world and give your learning back to the people" made a great impression on him.^[10]

At age 13, because he wanted to attend the academy there, he moved to the home of another foster family, in Fort Scott, Kansas. After witnessing the killing of a black man by a group of whites, Carver left the city. He attended a series of schools before earning his diploma at Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas.