10 interesting facts about george washington carver
In the post–Civil War South, one man made it his mission to use agricultural chemistry and scientific methodology to improve the lives of impoverished farmers.
George Washington Carver (ca.
Biography od george washington carver born He founded an industrial research laboratory, where he and assistants worked to popularize the new crops by developing hundreds of applications for them. In all, he developed more than food, industrial and commercial products from peanuts, including milk, Worcestershire sauce, punches, cooking oils, salad oil, paper, cosmetics, soaps and wood stains. Carver started his academic career as a researcher and teacher. To encourage better nutrition in the South, he widely distributed recipes using the alternative crops.–) was born enslaved in Missouri at the time of the Civil War. His exact birth date and year are unknown, and reported dates range between and He was orphaned as an infant, and, with the war bringing an end to slavery, he grew up a free child, albeit on the farm of his mother’s former master, Moses Carver.
The Carvers raised George and gave him their surname. Early on he developed a keen interest in plants, collecting specimens in the woods on the farm.
Education
At age 11, Carver left home to pursue an education in the nearby town of Neosho. He was taken in by an African American couple, Mariah and Andrew Watkins, for whom he did odd jobs while attending school for the first time.
George washington carver facts Supporters of the bill argued that the wartime expenditure was warranted because the monument would promote patriotic fervor among Black Americans and encourage them to enlist in the military. During the last two decades of his life, Carver seemed to enjoy his celebrity status. Recognizing its value in restoring nitrogen to depleted soil, Carver encouraged farmers to grow the lowly "goober. Carver started his academic career as a researcher and teacher.Disappointed in the school in Neosho, Carver eventually left for Kansas, where for several years he supported himself through a variety of occupations and added to his education in a piecemeal fashion.
He eventually earned a high school diploma in his twenties, but he soon found that opportunities to attend college for young black men in Kansas were nonexistent.
So in the late s Carver relocated again, this time to Iowa, where he met the Milhollands, a white couple who encouraged him to enroll in college.
Carver briefly attended Simpson College in Indianola, studying music and art. When a teacher there learned of his interest in botany, she encouraged him to transfer to Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University), dissuading him from his original dream of becoming an artist.
Biography od george washington carver elementary school Carver was also posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He enrolled in as the first African-American student at Iowa State. Patricia Bath. A careful and modest scientist, Carver was not without a sense of humor.Carver earned his bachelor’s degree in agricultural science from Iowa State in and a master’s in While there he demonstrated a talent for identifying and treating plant diseases.
Tuskegee
Around this time Booker T. Washington was looking to establish an agricultural department and research facility at his Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama.
Washington, the leading black statesman of the day, and two others had founded the institute in as a new vocational school for African Americans, and the institute had steadily grown.
As Carver was the only African American in the nation with an advanced degree in scientific agriculture, Washington sought him out. Carver joined the faculty of Tuskegee in and stayed there the rest of his life.
He was both a teacher and a prolific researcher, heading up the institute’s Agricultural Experiment Station.
Crop Rotation
Carver’s primary interest was in using chemistry and scientific methodology to improve the lives of impoverished farmers in southeastern Alabama.
Biography od george washington carver Carver's discoveries commercially. George of Trebizond. Two years later he earned a Master's degree in science. This revealed Washington's micro-management of Carver's department, which he had headed for more than 10 years by then.To that end he conducted soil studies to determine what crops would grow best in the region and found that the local soil was perfect for growing peanuts and sweet potatoes. He also taught farmers about fertilization and crop rotation as methods for increasing soil productivity. The primary crop in the South was cotton, which severely depleted soil nutrients, but by rotating crops—alternating cotton with soil-enriching crops like legumes and sweet potatoes—farmers could ultimately increase their cotton yield for a plot of land.
And crop rotation was cheaper than commercial fertilization. But what to do with all the sweet potatoes and peanuts? At the time, not many people ate them, and there weren’t many other uses for these crops.
New Uses for “Undesirable” Crops
Carver went to work to invent new food, industrial, and commercial products—including flour, sugar, vinegar, cosmetic products, paint, and ink—from these “lowly” plants.
From peanuts alone he developed hundreds of new products, thus creating a market for this inexpensive, soil-enriching legume.
In Carver famously spoke before the House Ways and Means Committee on behalf of the nascent peanut industry to secure tariff protection and was thereafter known as the Peanut Man.
When he first arrived at Tuskegee in , the peanut was not even a recognized U.S. crop; by it had become one of the six leading crops in the nation and the second cash crop in the South (after cotton).
Both peanuts and sweet potatoes were slowly incorporated into Southern cooking, and today the peanut especially is ubiquitous in the American diet.
Carver also developed traveling schools and other outreach programs to educate farmers. He published popular bulletins, distributed to farmers for free, that reported on his research at the Agricultural Experiment Station and its applications.
Recognition
Through chemistry and conviction Carver revolutionized Southern agriculture and raised the standard of living of his fellow man.
In addition to the popular honor of being one of the most recognized names in African American history, Carver received the Spingarn Medal and was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The George Washington Carver National Monument was the first national monument dedicated to a black American and the first to a nonpresident.
Featured image: George Washington Carver, Tuskegee Institute, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-J/Frances Benjamin Johnston.