George Washington Carver

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George Washington Carver (1860s – January 5, 1943) was an American agricultural scientist and entrepreneur.

He promoted alternative crops to cotton and techniques to prevent soil depletion.

He was the most influential black scientist of the early twentieth century. Carver, a Tuskegee University professor, invented ways to restore soils that had been depleted by repeated plantings of cotton.

He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes, as a source of their own food and to improve their quality of life.

105 food recipes using peanuts were among his 44 practical bulletins for farmers.

Although he spent years manufacturing and marketing numerous peanut-based items, none of whom were successful on their own, Carver was also a pioneer in environmental conservation.

He has been rewarded for his work, including the National Academy of Spingarn.

His fame extended outside of the black community during a period of heightened racial polarization.

He was widely acknowledged and lauded in the white community for his numerous achievements and talents.

Carver was dubbed a "Black Leonardo" in 1941 by Time magazine.

Early years

Carver was born into slavery in Diamond Grove (now Diamond), Newton County, Missouri, near Crystal Place, Missouri, around the mid-1960s. The date of his birth is uncertain and was not known to Carver; however, slavery was not banned in Missouri until 1865, which was during the American Civil War. Moses Carver, George's enslaver, had purchased Mary and Giles from William P. McGinnis on October 9, 1855, for $700.

Giles died before George was born, and night raiders from Arkansas abducted him and his mother when he was a week old. George's brother, James, was rushed to safety from the kidnappers. The kidnappers sold the three children in Kentucky. Moses Carver hired John Bentley to find them, but they didn't find them until the infant George. Moses negotiated with the raiders to ensure the boy's return and praised Bentley. Moses Carver and his partner, Susan, raised George and his older brother, James, as their own children after slavery was abolished. George encouraged him to continue his academic pursuits, and "Aunt Susan" taught him the fundamentals of reading and writing.

In Diamond Grove, black students were not allowed to attend the public school. In Neosho, George decided to go to a school for black children. He arrived in the town and discovered that the school was closed for the night. He slept in a nearby barn. He met Mariah Watkins, a kind woman from whom he wished to rent a room, on his own account, the next morning. When he referred to himself as "Carver's George" as he had lived his entire life, she replied that from now on his name, he would be "George Carver." George liked Mariah Watkins, who said, "You must learn all you can, then go out into the world and give your education back to the people."

He went to the home of another foster family in Fort Scott, Kansas, at age 13, because he wanted to attend the academy there. Carver left the area after witnessing the murder of a black man by a group of whites. Before obtaining his diploma at Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas, he attended a variety of colleges.

George Carver was in town during his time in Minneapolis, which caused a lot of confusion about receiving mail. Carver began requesting letters from him to George W. Carver after choosing a middle initial at random. Someone once wondered if the "W" stood for Washington, but Carver grinned and said, "Why not?" However, he never used Washington as his middle name, and instead signed his name as George W. Carver or simply George Carver.

College education

Before being accepted at Highland University in Highland, Kansas, Carver attended many colleges. However, when he arrived, they refused to allow him to attend due to his ethnicity. Carver went from Highland to Eden Township in Ness County, Kansas, in August 1886. J. F. Beeler was a passenger. He steered a claim near Beeler, where he owned a tiny conservatory of plants and flowers as well as a geological collection. The claim was manually plowed 17 acres (69,000 m2) of rice, corn, Indian corn, and garden produce, as well as other fruit trees, forest trees, and shrubbery. He also earned money in odd jobs in town and spent as a ranch hand.

Carver obtained a $300 loan at Bank of Ness City for education in early 1888. He left the area in June by June. Carver began studying art and piano at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, in 1890. Etta Budd, his art teacher, understood Carver's ability for painting flowers and plants; she encouraged him to study botany at Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) in Ames.

He was the first black student at Iowa State when he first arrived in 1891. "Plants as Modified by Man," Carver's Bachelor's thesis on a degree in Agriculture, which dates back to 1894. Joseph Budd and Louis Pammel, both from Iowa State University, persuaded Carver to continue studying for his master's degree. During the next two years, Carver conducted experiments at the Iowa Experiment Station under Pammel. His work at the experimental station in plant pathology and mycology first earned him national recognition and admiration as a botanist. Carver earned his Master of Science degree in 1896. Carver was the first black faculty member at Iowa State.

Despite being referred to as "doctor" by occasional, Carver never received a formal doctorate, and in a personal communication with Pammel, he said that it was a "misnomer" given to him by others due to his skills and their misjudgement of his education. With that said, both Simpson College and Selma University have given him honorary doctorates of science in his lifetime. In 1994, Iowa State University conferred a doctorate of humane letters to him.

Life while famous

Carver seemed to enjoy his celebrity in the last two decades of his life. He was often on the road promoting Tuskegee University, peanuts, and racial harmony. Despite the fact that he only published six agricultural bulletins in 1922, he wrote "Professor Carver's Advice" in peanut industry journals and cosponsored a syndicated newspaper column. Business executives contacted him to seek his assistance, and he was generous in giving free assistance. Three American presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Franklin Roosevelt all met with him, and the Crown Prince of Sweden studied with him for three weeks. Carver toured white Southern colleges from 1923 to 1933 for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation.

Merritt wrote:

After the boll weevil devastated the American cotton crop beginning in 1892, James Saxon Childers wrote that Carver and his peanut products were almost solely responsible for the rise in U.S. peanut production. In The American Magazine's 1932 novel "A Boy Who Was Traded for a Horse" (1932), and its 1937 reprint in Reader's Digest contributed to this myth concerning Carver's fame. Carver's impact on the peanut industry was exaggerated by other popular media outlets.

Carver worked on peanut oil massages to relieve infantile paralysis (polio). In the end, researchers discovered that massages, not the peanut oil, were able to restore some mobility to paralyzed legs.

Carver was involved in the USDA Disease Survey from 1935 to 1937. Carver's master's degree was specialized in plant diseases and mycology.

During the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, Carver attended two chemurgy conferences, which was an emerging field in the 1930s and 1930s. Henry Ford invited him to speak at the conference in Dearborn, Michigan, where they developed a friendship. Carver's health declined last year, and Ford later added an elevator at the Tuskegee dormitory, where Carver lived, so that the elderly man did not have to climb stairs.

Carver had been frugal in his youth, and in his seventies, he left a legacy by establishing a museum of his work, as well as the George Washington Carver Foundation in Tuskegee in 1938 to continue agricultural research. He invested nearly US$60,000 (roughly $1,155,035 in 2021) to fund the foundation, which was equivalent to $1,155,035 in 2021).

Carver was responsible for the modern organic movement in the southern agricultural system. Carver's interest in organic farming began when his father was killed during the Civil War and when his mother was abducted by Confederate slave raiders. Carver, an orphanage, discovered botany when he was just 11 years old in Kansas. Carver learned about herbal medicine, natural pesticides, and natural fertilizers that produced abundant crops from his caretaker. When crops and house plants were dying, he'd use his experience to help them return to health. He was dubbed the "plant doctor" as a youth.

When his booker T. Washington's report on soybean infection, he invited him to teach at the Tuskegee Agricultural college.

Although the emancipation demanded 40 acres and a mule, President Johnson rescheduled this and instead gave the property to white plantation owners. Black farmers were compelled to sell what was once their property, as well as a sliver of the land's harvest. This culminated in sharecropping. Carver soon discovered that farmers were not getting enough food to survive, and that cotton industrialization had contaminated the soil. Carver was keen to find a way to organically transform Alabama's decaying soil. He found that rotating nitrogen-rich crops would return the soil to its natural state. Farmers who grow sweet potatoes, peanuts, and cowpeas will result in more food shortages and various types of foods. Carver pioneered organic fertilizers like swamp muck and compost for the farmers to use. These fertilizers were more cost-effective to the climate and encouraged farmers to spend less money on fertilizers because they were recycled products. Carver advocated for woodland preservation in an attempt to protect the topsoil's quality. He urged farmers to feed their hogs acorns. The acorns were high in natural pesticides, and feeding them acorns was cheaper for the farms as well. Carver's attempts to take a holistic and organic approach are still in place today. Carver discovered Permaculture in his research. Despite global warming, permaculture could be used to obtain carbon dioxide, grow a higher number of crops, and allow crops to flourish. President Biden understood the Permaculture's success as portrayed by Carver and is now using it in his climate policy, which is based on sustainable agriculture.

Personal life

Even as an adult, Carver spoke with a high pitch. Linda O. McMurry, a historian, said he was "a frail and sickly child" who died "from a serious case of whooping cough and frequent bouts of what was referred to as croup." McMurry denied the diagnosis of croup, instead saying that "His stunted growth and apparently impaired vocal cords indicate tubercular or pneumococcal infection. Polyps on the larynx may have grown as a result of a gamma globulin deficiency. ... his voice began to make him smile, and he suffered from frequent chest congestion and loss of voice until his death.

Carver believed in both faith and science and integrated them into his life. On several occasions, he testified that his faith in Jesus was the only way by which he could effectively explore and practice science. Carver converted to Christianity when he was a young boy, as he wrote about it in 1931.

Due to his poor health, he was not expected to live past his 21st birthday. He lived well past the age of 21, and his faith sparked as a result. He has always enjoyed Christian fellowship throughout his life. He rely on them especially when they were criticized by the scientific community and the media in terms of his study methods.

Carver saw faith in Jesus Christ as a means of destroying both barriers of racial injustice and socioeconomic stratification. He was as worried about his students' emotional growth as he was with their intellectual growth. He assembled a list of "eight cardinal virtues" whose possession distinguishes "a lady or a gentleman":

Carver taught a Bible class at Tuskegee, beginning in 1906 at Tuskegee. Many students were enrolled in Sundays at their request. He often told stories by making them out. "If you do the everyday things in life in an unusual way, you will command the world's attention."

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