an essay about george washington carver

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center

What was George Washington Carver’s childhood like?

How did george washington carver change the world.

• Is mathematics a physical science?

George Washington Carver

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• Encyclopedia of Alabama - Biography of George Washington Carver
• American Chemical Society - George Washington Carver
• Linda Hall Library - George Washington Carver
• Historic Missourians - George Washington Carver
• Documenting The American South - George Washington Carver: Advocate for Southern Farmers
• Kansas Historical Society - Kansapedia - Biography of George Washington Carver
• National Park Service - George Washington Carver
• Live Science - George Washington Carver: Biography, Inventions and Quotes
• Science History Institute - George Washington Carver
• George Washington Carver - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• George Washington Carver - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Who was George Washington Carver?

George Washington Carver was an American agricultural chemist, agronomist, and experimenter whose development of new products derived from  peanuts  (groundnuts),  sweet potatoes , and  soybeans  helped revolutionize the agricultural economy of  the South .

George Washington Carver was born into slavery, the son of an enslaved woman named Mary, owned by Moses Carver. During the  American Civil War , George and Mary were kidnapped and taken away to be sold. Moses Carver located George but not Mary, and George lived on the Carver property until about age 10 or 12.

How was George Washington Carver educated?

In his late 20s George Washington Carver obtained a high-school education in Kansas while working as a farmhand. He received a bachelor’s degree in  agricultural science  (1894) and a master of science degree (1896) from Iowa State Agricultural College (later  Iowa State University ).

George Washington Carver’s work, which began for the sake of poor Black sharecroppers , led to a better life for the entire South by liberating it from its environmentally destructive dependence on cotton . His efforts brought about a significant advance in agricultural training in an era when agriculture was the largest single occupation of Americans.

George Washington Carver (born 1861?, near Diamond Grove , Missouri , U.S.—died January 5, 1943, Tuskegee , Alabama) was a revolutionary American agricultural chemist, agronomist , and experimenter who was born into slavery and sought to uplift Black farmers through the development of new products derived from peanuts , sweet potatoes , and soybeans . His work helped transform the stagnant agricultural economy of the South after the American Civil War . For most of his career he taught and conducted research at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University ) in Tuskegee, Alabama.

Carver was the son of an enslaved woman named Mary, who was owned by Moses Carver; his father was killed in an accident before he was born. Of his early life, Carver wrote, “I was born in Diamond Grove, Missouri, about the close of the great Civil War, in a little one-roomed log shanty, on the home of Mr. Moses Carver, a German by birth and the owner of my mother, my father being the property of Mr. Grant, who owned the adjoining plantation.” During the turbulence of the Civil War, the Carver farm was raided, and infant George and his mother were kidnapped and taken to Arkansas to be sold. Moses Carver was eventually able to track down young George but was unable to find Mary. Frail and sick, the orphaned child was returned to the Carver plantation and nursed back to health.

With the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, George was no longer enslaved. He remained with the Carvers until he was about 10 or 12 years old, when he left to acquire an education. He traveled 8 miles (13 km) to the county seat of Neosho , Missouri, where he found room and board with Mariah and Andrew Watkins, an African American couple. He briefly attended a school for Black children but quickly moved beyond the basic literacy offered by the schoolmaster, who himself had a limited education. Carver then spent some time wandering about, working with his hands and developing his keen interest in plants and animals. Both Susan Carver—the wife of his former owner—and Mariah Watkins had taught him about gardening and medicinal herbs, and he continued to grow his botanical knowledge. He also learned to draw, and later in life he devoted considerable time to painting flowers, plants, and landscapes.

By both books—including Webster’s Elementary Spelling Book , which he learned nearly by heart—and experience, young George acquired a fragmentary education while doing whatever work came to hand in order to subsist. He supported himself by varied occupations that included general household worker, hotel cook, laundryman, farm laborer, and homesteader. In his late 20s he obtained a high-school education in Minneapolis, Kansas , while working as a farmhand. He applied and was accepted to Highland College in Kansas, but, when he appeared in person to register, the school refused to admit him because he was Black. Pained by that rejection, he continued to travel the country and eventually landed in Iowa, where he met the white Milhollands sometime in the late 1800s. The couple befriended him and urged Carver to enroll in nearby Simpson College in Indianola ; he would later credit them for his continued pursuit of higher education . Carver studied piano and art at Simpson before transferring to Iowa State Agricultural College (later Iowa State University ), where he received a bachelor’s degree in agricultural science in 1894 and a Master of Science degree in 1896.

Carver left Iowa for Alabama in the fall of 1896 to direct the newly organized department of agriculture at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute , a school headed by noted African American educator Booker T. Washington . Given that Carver was the only African American in the United States with a graduate degree in agricultural science , Washington aggressively pursued him for the all-Black faculty of the school. In accepting the position, Carver wrote:

It has always been the one great ideal of my life to be of the greatest good to the greatest number of ‘my people’ possible and to this end I have been preparing myself these many years; feeling as I do that this line of education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom to our people.

Indeed, at Tuskegee, Washington sought to improve the lot of African Americans through education and the acquisition of useful skills rather than through political agitation, and he stressed conciliation and compromise. Carver complemented those aims in his desire to help Black farmers rise above sharecropping and saw economic development as a path for Black advancement in American society. Despite many offers elsewhere, Carver remained at Tuskegee for the rest of his life.

After becoming the institute’s director of agricultural research in 1896, Carver devoted his time to research projects aimed at helping Southern agriculture, demonstrating ways in which farmers could improve their economic situation. He conducted experiments in soil management and crop production and directed an experimental farm. At this time, agriculture in the Deep South was in steep decline because the unremitting single-crop cultivation of cotton had left the soil of many fields exhausted and worthless, and erosion had then taken its toll on areas that could no longer sustain any plant cover. As a remedy, Carver urged Southern farmers to plant peanuts ( Arachis hypogaea ) and soybeans ( Glycine max ). As members of the legume family ( Fabaceae ), these plants could restore nitrogen to the soil while also providing the protein so badly needed in the diet of many Southerners.

Carver found that Alabama’s soils were particularly well suited to growing peanuts and sweet potatoes ( Ipomoea batatas ), but, when the state’s farmers began cultivating these crops instead of cotton, they found little demand for them on the market. In response to this problem, Carver set about enlarging the commercial possibilities of the peanut and sweet potato through a long and ingenious program of laboratory research. He ultimately developed 300 derivative products from peanuts—among them milk, flour , ink , dyes , plastics , wood stains, soap , linoleum , medicinal oils, and cosmetics —and 118 from sweet potatoes, including flour, vinegar , molasses , ink, a synthetic rubber , and postage stamp glue. In helping farmers, particularly Black sharecroppers, find a market for their crops and increase the productivity of their farms by protecting and regenerating the soil, Carver hoped to bring them closer to financial security and liberation.

In 1914, at a time when the boll weevil had almost ruined cotton growers, Carver revealed his experiments to the public, and increasing numbers of the South’s farmers began to turn to peanuts, sweet potatoes, and their derivatives for income. Much exhausted land was renewed, and the South became a major new supplier of agricultural products. When Carver arrived at Tuskegee in 1896, the peanut had not even been recognized as a crop, but within the next half century it became one of the six leading crops throughout the United States and, in the South, the second cash crop (after cotton) by 1940. In 1942 the U.S. government allotted 2,023,428 hectares (5,000,000 acres) of peanuts to farmers. Carver’s efforts had finally helped liberate the South from its excessive dependence on cotton.

Among Carver’s many honors were his election to Britain’s Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (London) in 1916 and his receipt of the Spingarn Medal in 1923. Late in his career he declined an invitation to work for Thomas Edison at a salary of more than $100,000 a year. U.S. Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Franklin D. Roosevelt visited him, and his friends included Henry Ford and Mahatma Gandhi . Foreign governments requested his counsel on agricultural matters: Joseph Stalin , for example, in 1931 invited him to manage cotton plantations in southern Russia and to make a tour of the Soviet Union , but Carver refused.

In 1940 Carver donated his life savings to the establishment of the Carver Research Foundation at Tuskegee for continuing research in agriculture. During World War II he worked to replace the textile dyes formerly imported from Europe, and in all he produced dyes of 500 shades.

Many scientists thought of Carver more as a concoctionist than as a contributor to scientific knowledge. Many of his fellow African Americans were critical of what they regarded as his subservience. Certainly, this small, mild, soft-spoken, innately modest man, eccentric in dress and mannerism, seemed unbelievably heedless of the conventional pleasures and rewards of this life. But these qualities endeared Carver to many whites, who were almost invariably charmed by his humble demeanor and his quiet work in self-imposed segregation at Tuskegee. As a result of his accommodation to the mores of the South, many whites came to regard him with a sort of patronizing adulation .

Carver thus, for much of white America, increasingly came to stand as a kind of saintly and comfortable symbol of the intellectual achievements of African Americans. Carver was evidently uninterested in the role his image played in the racial politics of the time. His great desire in later life was simply to serve humanity, and his work, which began for the sake of the poorest of the Black sharecroppers , paved the way for a better life for the entire South. On the importance of leaving a legacy , he famously quipped, “No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and legitimate reasons for having passed through it.” His efforts brought about a significant advance in agricultural training in an era when agriculture was the largest single occupation of Americans, and he extended Tuskegee’s influence throughout the South by encouraging improved farm methods, crop diversification, and soil conservation.

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

George Washington Carver

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 24, 2023 | Original: October 27, 2009

George Washington Carver was an agricultural scientist and inventor who developed hundreds of products using peanuts (though not peanut butter, as is often claimed), sweet potatoes and soybeans. Born into slavery before it was outlawed, Carver left home at a young age to pursue education and would eventually earn a master’s degree in agricultural science from Iowa State University. He would go on to teach and conduct research at Tuskegee University for decades, and soon after his death his childhood home would be named a national monument—the first of its kind to honor a Black American.

Born on a farm near Diamond, Missouri , the exact date of Carver’s birth is unknown, but it’s thought he was born in January or June of 1864.

Nine years prior, Moses Carver, a white farm owner, purchased George Carver’s mother Mary when she was 13 years old. The elder Carver reportedly was against slavery , but needed help with his 240-acre farm.

When Carver was an infant, he, his mother and his sister were kidnapped from the Carver farm by one of the bands of slave raiders that roamed Missouri during the Civil War era. They were resold in Kentucky .

Moses Carver hired a neighbor to retrieve them, but the neighbor only succeeded in finding George, whom he purchased by trading one of Moses’ finest horses. Carver grew up knowing little about his mother or his father, who had died in an accident before he was born.

Moses Carver and his wife Susan raised the young George and his brother James as their own and taught the boys how to read and write.

James gave up his studies and focused on working the fields with Moses. George, however, was a frail and sickly child who could not help with such work; instead, Susan taught him how to cook, mend, embroider, do laundry and garden, as well as how to concoct simple herbal medicines.

At a young age, Carver took a keen interest in plants and experimented with natural pesticides, fungicides and soil conditioners. He became known as the “the plant doctor” to local farmers due to his ability to discern how to improve the health of their gardens, fields and orchards.

At age 11, Carver left the farm to attend an all-Black school in the nearby town of Neosho.

He was taken in by Andrew and Mariah Watkins, a childless Black couple who gave him a roof over his head in exchange for help with household chores. A midwife and nurse, Mariah imparted on Carver her broad knowledge of medicinal herbs and her devout faith.

Disappointed with the education he received at the Neosho school, Carver moved to Kansas about two years later, joining numerous other Blacks who were traveling west.

For the next decade or so, Carver moved from one Midwestern town to another, putting himself through school and surviving off of the domestic skills he learned from his foster mothers.

He graduated from Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas, in 1880 and applied to Highland College in Kansas (today’s Highland Community College ). He was initially accepted at the all-white college but was later rejected when the administration learned he was Black.

In the late 1880s, Carver befriended the Milhollands, a white couple in Winterset, Iowa , who encouraged him to pursue a higher education. Despite his former setback, he enrolled in Simpson College , a Methodist school that admitted all qualified applicants.

Carver initially studied art and piano in hopes of earning a teaching degree, but one of his professors, Etta Budd, was skeptical of a Black man being able to make a living as an artist. After learning of his interests in plants and flowers, Budd encouraged Carver to apply to the Iowa State Agricultural School (now Iowa State University ) to study botany.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

Watch acclaimed Black History documentaries on HISTORY Vault.

Carver Makes Black History

In 1894, Carver 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.

Carver worked with famed mycologist (fungal scientist) L.H. Pammel at the Iowa State Experimental Station, honing his skills in identifying and treating plant diseases.

In 1896, Carver earned his Master of Agriculture degree and immediately received several offers, the most attractive of which came from Booker T. Washington (whose last name George would later add to his own) of Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University ) in Alabama .

Washington convinced the university’s trustees to establish an agricultural school, which could only be run by Carver if Tuskegee was to keep its all-Black faculty. Carver accepted the offer and would work at Tuskegee Institute for the rest of his life.

Tuskegee Institute

Carver’s early years at Tuskegee were not without hiccups.

For one, agriculture training was not popular—Southern farmers believed they already knew how to farm and students saw schooling as a means to escape farming. Additionally, many faculty members resented Carver for his high salary and demand to have two dormitory rooms, one for him and one for his plant specimens.

Carver also struggled with the demands of the faculty position he held. He wanted to devote his time to researching agriculture for ways to help out poor Southern farmers, but he was also expected to manage the school’s two farms, teach, ensure the school’s toilets and sanitary facilities worked properly, and sit on multiple committees and councils.

Carver and Washington had a complicated relationship and would butt heads often, in part because Carver wanted little to do with teaching (though he was beloved by his students). Carver would eventually get his way when Washington died in 1915 and was succeeded by Robert Russa Moton, who relieved Carver of his teaching duties except for summer school.

Black History Facts

Black History Month honors the contributions of African Americans to U.S. history. Learn about famous firsts in African American history and other little‑known facts.

8 Black Inventors Who Made Daily Life Easier

Black innovators changed the way we live through their many innovations, from the traffic light to the ironing board.

Black History Milestones: Timeline

Black history in the United States is a rich and varied chronicle of slavery and liberty, oppression and progress, segregation and achievement.

What Did George Washington Carver Invent?

By this time, Carver already had great successes in the laboratory and the community. He taught poor farmers that they could feed hogs acorns instead of commercial feed and enrich croplands with swamp muck instead of fertilizers. But it was his ideas regarding crop rotation that proved to be most valuable.

Through his work on soil chemistry, Carver learned that years of growing cotton had depleted the nutrients from soil, resulting in low yields. But by growing nitrogen-fixing plants like peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes, the soil could be restored, allowing yield to increase dramatically when the land was reverted to cotton use a few years later.

To further help farmers, he invented the Jessup wagon, a kind of mobile (horse-drawn) classroom and laboratory used to demonstrate soil chemistry.

Carver: The Peanut Man

Farmers, of course, loved the high yields of cotton they were now getting from Carver’s crop rotation technique. But the method had an unintended consequence: A surplus of peanuts and other non-cotton products.

Carver set to work on finding alternative uses for these products. For example, he invented numerous products from sweet potatoes, including edible products like flour and vinegar and non-food items such as stains, dyes, paints and writing ink.

But Carver’s biggest success came from peanuts.

In all, he developed more than 300 food, industrial and commercial products from peanuts, including milk, Worcestershire sauce, punches, cooking oils, salad oil, paper, cosmetics, soaps and wood stains. He also experimented with peanut-based medicines, such as antiseptics, laxatives and goiter medications.

It should be noted, however, that many of these suggestions or discoveries remained curiosities and did not find widespread applications.

In 1921, Carver appeared before the Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on behalf of the peanut industry, which was seeking tariff protection. Though his testimony did not begin well, he described the wide range of products that could be made from peanuts, which not only earned him a standing ovation but also convinced the committee to approve a high protected tariff for the common legume.

He then became known as “The Peanut Man.”

Fame and Legacy

In the last two decades of his life, Carver lived as a minor celebrity but his focus was always on helping people.

He traveled the South to promote racial harmony, and he traveled to India to discuss nutrition in developing nations with Mahatma Gandhi .

Up until the year of his death, he also released bulletins for the public (44 bulletins between 1898 and 1943). Some of the bulletins reported on research findings but many others were more practical in nature and included cultivation information for farmers, science for teachers and recipes for housewives.

In the mid-1930s, when the polio virus raged in America, Carver became convinced that peanuts were the answer. He offered a treatment of peanut oil massages and reported positive results, though no scientific evidence exists that the treatments worked (the benefits patients experienced were likely due to the massage treatment and attentive care rather than the oil).

Carver died on January 5, 1943, at Tuskegee Institute after falling down the stairs of his home. He was 78 years old. Carver was buried next to Booker T. Washington on the Tuskegee Institute grounds.

Soon after, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation for Carver to receive his own monument, an honor previously only granted to presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln .

The George Washington Carver National Monument now stands in Diamond, Missouri. Carver was also posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

“Where there is no vision, there is no hope.”

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”

“When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.”

George Washington Carver; American Chemical Society . George W. Carver (1865? – 1943); The State Historical Society of Missouri . George Washington Carver; Science History Museum . George Washington Carver, The Black History Monthiest Of Them All; NPR . George Washington Carver And The Peanut; American Heritage .

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

George Washington Carver, His Life and Research Essay (Biography)

The personality of the brilliant African American chemist and botanist George Washington Carver seems to be reduced nowadays to “the man who worked with peanuts”. This remarkable person has made a revolution in farming, enlightened the Tuskegee Institute, and has reached the fame that was hard to achieve being an African American in the 19-20 th century US. For historians and human right activists he has served as a living rebuttal of ethnocentric and racist theories. For farmers, he was the savior of Southern agriculture. For religious people, he was an epitome of faith and humility. What is left of this person is “the Peanut Man” image and a monument in Diamond, Missouri, where George Washington Carter was born. Mistakenly believed to have invented peanut butter – which he has not – George Washington Carver is a complex and ambiguous personality, which seems to be somewhat mistreated by history and public recognition.

George Washington Carver comes from Diamond Grove, Missouri. The exact date of his birth is unknown, but it is estimated to be in the mid-1860s. Carver had never excelled in health, which is why, coming from a slave family, he has never been sent to work in the fields. Instead, the boy did gardening. He also developed a passion for watching Nature in its ways and was very talented with plants (Kremer 3-4). At the age of 12, George Washington Carver stepped out on the platform in Iowa on his geas to get educated. The Simpson College has shown the young man the beauty of art, in which he also proved to be gifted. Nevertheless, having set and reset his priorities, Carter chose the path of agriculture and went to the Iowa State University in the beginning of 1890s. He turned out to be the first African American youth to ever make an attempt to enter the Iowa State. Also, he was the first ever African American to work at an educational institution. He was invited to teach at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, in 1886. Working as a professor, George Washington Carver got the chance to begin his research (Hersey 14-16).

Having arrived at Tuskegee, however, George Washington Carver had to face the shortage of funds, which forced him to personally construct the laboratory and equipment he needed. With the help of his students, Carver did it literally out of trash: they made things out of garbage they encountered. We are fully aware of the concept of recycling, but at the end of the 19 th century, these trash raids were ahead of the time. Nevertheless, the lab was built – and the results of the research have brought George Washington Carver fame and recognition, at least back then. He has conducted a phenomenal research featuring sweet potatoes, which could be used for producing wood fillers, sweets, flours, and more (Hersey 135-137). In 1916, his well-known research bulletin “How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it For Human Consumption” was brought out (Hersey 258). The bulletin proved very helpful for farmers who had to face the mass destructions of cotton caused by the swarms of boll weevil in Alabama. Peanuts were cheap and multifunctional and have quickly become popular. There was the peanut oil and peanut plants for cattle, and multiple ways of cooking with peanuts. Apart from food, George Washington Carver discovered 300 ways of using peanuts in various products for everyday use, e.g., dyes, plastic, gasoline, shaving cream, hand lotion, etc. (Hersey 259-230). The actual peanut butter was never on the list; the product has been developer long before Carver.

George Washington Carver has never regarded his research as purely scientific. What he wanted was to help people; this stance and his Christianity made him a figure of respect. Another factor of Carver’s popularity was that he did not only talk about helping each other but actually did it. He was very well aware that his research might help people of color dwelling in the South and being choked by poverty. What was still more drastic, the South was rapidly running out of resources. Carver’s main contribution was with regard to low price of peanuts and sweet potatoes, and he devoted his entire life to saving other people’s lives – although he never acknowledged that being a person devoid of vanity. George Washington Carter has experienced much difficulty in his way due to ethnocentric and racist inclinations of the society he lived in. However, he made frequent travels during which he taught agriculture to anyone who would listen. On his travels, he had to use the “colored” train carriages and hotels – but he never stopped (Kremer 47-50).

After his death in 1943, George Washington Carver’s fortune, in which he had shown very little personal interest, was donated to Tuskegee Research Institute. Perseverance and faithfulness, as well as his utmost devotion to research for the sake of common good characterizes Carver much better than the common image of “the Peanut Man” that we are so used to, today.

Works Cited

Hersey, Mark D. My Work Is That of Conservation: An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver . Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2011. Print.

Kremer, Gary R. George Washington Carver: In His Own Words . Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2013. Print.

• Bertrand Russell, His Life and Work
• Albert Einstein, His Life and Career
• J. M. Smucker Company Analysis
• Cathedral' by Raymond Carver Literature Analysis
• How Students Develop Creative Peanut Butter and Jelly Construction Skills: Thinking Outside the Breadbox
• Sojourner Truth: Slavery Abolitionist and Women's Suffrage
• Victoria, the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
• Galileo Affair in Letter to Grand Duchess Christina
• Phineas Taylor Barnum - Biography Study
• Cleopatra - The Queen of Egypt
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, May 10). George Washington Carver, His Life and Research. https://ivypanda.com/essays/george-washington-carver-his-life-and-research/

"George Washington Carver, His Life and Research." IvyPanda , 10 May 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/george-washington-carver-his-life-and-research/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'George Washington Carver, His Life and Research'. 10 May.

IvyPanda . 2020. "George Washington Carver, His Life and Research." May 10, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/george-washington-carver-his-life-and-research/.

1. IvyPanda . "George Washington Carver, His Life and Research." May 10, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/george-washington-carver-his-life-and-research/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "George Washington Carver, His Life and Research." May 10, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/george-washington-carver-his-life-and-research/.

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

IvyPanda uses cookies and similar technologies to enhance your experience, enabling functionalities such as:

• Basic site functions
• Ensuring secure, safe transactions
• Secure account login
• Remembering account, browser, and regional preferences
• Remembering privacy and security settings
• Analyzing site traffic and usage
• Personalized search, content, and recommendations
• Displaying relevant, targeted ads on and off IvyPanda

Please refer to IvyPanda's Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy for detailed information.

Certain technologies we use are essential for critical functions such as security and site integrity, account authentication, security and privacy preferences, internal site usage and maintenance data, and ensuring the site operates correctly for browsing and transactions.

Cookies and similar technologies are used to enhance your experience by:

• Remembering general and regional preferences
• Personalizing content, search, recommendations, and offers

Some functions, such as personalized recommendations, account preferences, or localization, may not work correctly without these technologies. For more details, please refer to IvyPanda's Cookies Policy .

To enable personalized advertising (such as interest-based ads), we may share your data with our marketing and advertising partners using cookies and other technologies. These partners may have their own information collected about you. Turning off the personalized advertising setting won't stop you from seeing IvyPanda ads, but it may make the ads you see less relevant or more repetitive.

Personalized advertising may be considered a "sale" or "sharing" of the information under California and other state privacy laws, and you may have the right to opt out. Turning off personalized advertising allows you to exercise your right to opt out. Learn more in IvyPanda's Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy .

In Search of George Washington Carver’s True Legacy

The famed agriculturalist deserves to be known for much more than peanuts

Rachel Kaufman

Contributing writer

If the name George Washington Carver conjures up any spark of recognition, it’s probably associated with peanuts. That isn’t an unfair connection—he did earn the nickname “the peanut man” for his work with the legume—but it’s one that doesn’t give credit to the rest of Carver’s pioneering, fascinating work.

“People, when they think of Carver, they think of his science—or they think he invented peanuts,” says Curtis Gregory, a park ranger at the George Washington Carver National Monument at Carver’s birthplace in Diamond, Missouri. “There’s so much more to the man.”

Mark Hersey, a history professor at Mississippi State University and author of an environmental biography of Carver, says that “[Carver] became famous for things he probably shouldn’t have been famous for, and that fame obscured the reasons we should remember him.” In Hersey’s view, the contributions Carver made to the environmental movement, including his ahead-of-the-times ideas about self-sufficiency and sustainability, are far more important than the “cook-stove chemistry” he engaged in.

Nonetheless, Carver became ludicrously famous for his peanut work—possibly the most famous black man in America for a while. ­Upon his death in 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt remarked on his passing: “The world of science has lost one of its most eminent figures,” he said.

Carver was born enslaved in western rural Missouri, orphaned as an infant and freed shortly after the Civil War. Sometime in his 20s, Carver moved to Iowa where a white couple he met encouraged him to pursue higher education. Carver’s education before this had been largely patchy and self-taught; at Simpson College in central Iowa, he studied art until a teacher encouraged him to enroll at Iowa State Agricultural College to study botany. There, he became the school’s first African-American student.

Founded in 1858, Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) was the country’s first land-grant university, a group of schools with a mission to teach not just the liberal arts but the applied sciences, too, including agriculture. There, students studied soils, entomology, analytical and agricultural chemistry, practical agriculture, landscape gardening and rural architecture, in addition to more basic subjects like algebra, bookkeeping, geography and psychology.

Upon graduation from Iowa State in 1896, Carver was bombarded with offers to teach. The most attractive was that from Booker T. Washington, the first leader of the Tuskegee Institute, which was opening an agricultural school. As the first black man in the U.S. to receive graduate training in modern agricultural methods, Carver was the logical choice for the role. He accepted, writing that “it has always been the one great ideal of my life to be of the greatest good to the greatest number of ‘my people’ possible and to this end I have been preparing myself these many years; feeling as I do that this line of education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom to our people.”

As Carver rode the train to Alabama, however, his heart sank. In a 1941 radio broadcast, he recalled: “My train left the golden wheat fields and the tall green corn of Iowa for the acres of cotton, nothing but cotton, ... ... The scraggly cotton grew close up to the cabin doors; a few lonesome collards, the only sign of vegetables; stunted cattle, boney mules; fields and hill sides cracked and scarred with gullies and deep ruts ... Not much evidence of scientific farming anywhere. Everything looked hungry: the land, the cotton, the cattle, and the people.”

What Carver understood was that cotton, while lucrative, did nothing to replenish the soil. It’s not the most demanding crop, but its shallow roots, and the practice of monocropping, mean that soil erodes faster from a cotton field than if the earth was left alone. (Carver later would describe eroded gullies on the Tuskeegee campus that were deep enough for a person to stand inside.)

What he failed to understand, however, were the political and social forces he would be up against.

“He’s enormously arrogant when he comes down,” Hersey says. “It’s an innocent arrogance, if anything.” At Tuskegee, Carver published and distributed bulletins suggesting farmers buy a second horse to run a two-horse plow, which could till soil deeper, and described commercial fertilizers “as if people have never heard of them.” Most of the poor sharecropping black farmers had heard of fertilizer, but couldn’t scrape together the money to buy any, let alone a second horse.

“And then it dawns on him,” says Hersey. In turn-of-the-century Alabama, black farmers lived a precarious existence, ever-threatened by unevenly enforced laws that disproportionately harmed blacks. After the Civil War, Southern landowners “allowed” poor farmers, mostly blacks, to work their land in exchange for a fee or a cut of the crop. The system was precarious—one bad year could push a farmer into ruinous debt—and unfair: One historian called it “a system of near slavery without legal sanctions.” Near Tuskegee, one tenant farmer was arrested “for chopping wood too close to the property line,” Hersey says. While the farmer remained in jail, whites put up his farm for sale. When tenants didn’t control their land and could be evicted at any time—or kicked off their land on trumped-up charges—they had little incentive to improve the soil.

Still, Carver got to work. He worked tirelessly—the Carver Monument says from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. some days—on improving crop yields and encouraging farmers to diversify. That, too, was tough: Financially lucrative cotton, Hersey says, was seen as the only crop that could get tenants out of debt. Carver encouraged farmers to grow, or at the very least forage, their own vegetables and proteins so they would spend less money on food. Later, he developed and implemented the Jesup Agricultural Wagon, a school-on-wheels that brought agricultural equipment and demonstration materials to rural farmers unable to travel. The wagon reached 2,000 people a month in its first summer of operations, in 1906.

“What Carver comes to see,” Hersey says, was that “altering [black sharecroppers’] interactions with the natural world could undermine the very pillars of Jim Crow.” Hersey argues that black Southerners viewed their lives under Jim Crow through an environmental lens. “If we want to understand their day to day lives, it’s not separate drinking fountains, it’s ‘How do I make a living on this soil, under these circumstances, where I’m not protected’“ by the institutions that are supposed to protect its citizens? Carver encouraged farmers to look to the land for what they needed, rather than going into debt buying fertilizer (and paint, and soap, and other necessities—and food). Instead of buying the fertilizer that “scientific agriculture” told them to buy, farmers should compost. In lieu of buying paint, they should make it themselves from clay and soybeans.

“He gave black farmers a means of staying on the land. We all couldn’t move north to Chicago and New York,” Michael Twitty, a culinary historian, told the Chicago Tribune .

And that’s where the peanuts come in. Peanuts could be grown in the same fields as cotton, because their productive times of year were different. While some plants need to be fertilized with nitrogen, peanuts can produce their own, thanks to a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that live on their roots. That special trait meant they could restore nutrients to depleted soil, and they were “an enormously rich food source,” high in protein and more nutritious than the “3M--meat, meal and molasses” diet that most poor farmers subsisted on.

Carver encouraged farmers to grow peanuts, but then he had to encourage them to do something with those peanuts, hence his famous “ 300 uses for peanuts .” Carver’s peanut work led him to create peanut bread, peanut cookies, peanut sausage, peanut ice cream, and even peanut coffee. He patented a peanut-butter-based face cream, and created peanut-based shampoo, dyes and paints, and even the frightening-sounding “peanut nitroglycerine.”

However, this number may be a little inflated. Of the roughly 300 uses for the peanut (the Carver Museum at Tuskegee gives 287) Carver detailed, “many…were clearly not original,” such as a recipe for salted peanuts, historian Barry Mackintosh wrote in American Heritage in 1977 on the occasion of the election of peanut-farmer Jimmy Carter as president. Others he may have gotten from contemporary cookbooks or magazines; at the beginning of “ How To Grow The Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing It For Human Consumption “ Carver “gratefully acknowledge[s] assistance” from more than 20 sources, including Good Housekeeping , The Montgomery Advertiser , Wallace ’s Farmer and a number of other magazines, newspapers and cookbooks.

Yet Carver had no illusions about his work. He wasn’t trying to create “the best” products—or even wholly original ones, as few of his creations were—but to disseminate information and recipes that could be made by poor farmers with few tools or resources.

He cared about helping what he called “the furthest man down,” says Gregory.

Carver’s student John Sutton, who worked with him in his lab around 1919, recalled:

When I could not find the “real” scientist in him, I became hurt.... I should have known better since time and again he made it clear to me that he was primarily an artist who created good ... out of natural things. He knew that he was not “a real chemist” so-called engaged in even applied chemical research. He used to say to me jokingly, “You and I are ‘cook-stove chemists’ but we dare not admit it, because it would damage the publicity that Dr. Moton [Booker T. Washington’s successor] and his assistants send out in press releases about me and my research, for his money-raising campaigns.”

Carver’s ubiquitous association with peanuts is in many ways due to the explosive testimony he delivered before Congress in favor of a peanut tariff. In 1921, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee asked Carver to testify on a proposed tariff on imported peanuts. Expecting an uneducated backwoodsman, the committee was blown away by the soft-spoken scientist.

“He’s had thousands of public speaking appearances at this point,” Hersey says. “He can handle it all. [Congress] is making watermelon jokes, but they’re not saying anything he hasn’t already heard at the Georgia State Fair.” The tariff on imported peanuts stuck, and Carver became, in Hersey’s words, “a rockstar.”

Late in his life, a visitor asked Carver if he believed his peanut work was his greatest work. “No,” he replied, “but it has been featured more than my other work.”

So what was his work? Hersey argues it was a way of thinking holistically about the environment, and an understanding, well before it had reached mainstream thought, of the interconnectedness between the health of the land and the health of the people who lived on it. “His campaign is to open your eyes to the world around you,” Hersey says, to understand, in Carver’s phrase, “the mutual dependency of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms.” But that doesn’t make for good soundbites, even today.

It’s not as catchy as 300 uses for peanuts, but years before the environmental movement took hold, Twitty told the Tribune , “Carver knew the value of working the land, of being with the land, of working with each other.”

Get the latest History stories in your inbox?

Click to visit our Privacy Statement .

Rachel Kaufman | READ MORE

Rachel Kaufman writes about games, cities and science.

• (602)675-4755

[email protected]

(602) 675-4755.

George Washington Carver

“The Primary idea in all my work was to help the farmer and fill the poor man’s empty dinner pail … My idea is to help the ‘man farthest down’; This is why I have made every process as simple as I could to put it within his reach.”

George W. Carver

George Washington Carver, Born a slave around 1864, became a famous artist, teacher, scientist, and humanitarian. From childhood, he developed a remarkable understanding of the natural world. Carver devoted his life to improving agriculture and the economic conditions of African-Americans in the south.

In 1896, Booker T Washington hired Carver to teach agriculture at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Over a 40-year career, Carver taught many generations of Tuskegee students. He emphasized increasing the independence of local farmers. He believed that a practical education would both make African-Americans and white farmers self-sufficient.

“It has always been the one ideal of my life to be of the greatest good to the greatest number of my people possible and to this end I have been preparing myself for these many years, feeling as I do that this line of education is the key” 

Struggle and Triumph: The Legacy of George Washington Carver  (NPS Movie 28min) 

The Early Years

“Day after day I spent in the woods… to collect my floral beauties… all sorts of vegetation seemed to thrive under my touch until I was styled the plant doctor, and plants from all over the county would be brought to me for treatment”

 George Washington Carver

Born as a slave on a small farm in Diamond Grove, Missouri; the best information suggest he was born in 1864, near the end of the civil war. To appreciate nature and to assist his learning, George began a lifelong habit of taking long walks to observe nature and collect specimens.

Religion also played an important role in Carver’s life. It broke down social and racial barriers and was the inspiration for his research and teachings. Yet, he did not allow his beliefs to conflict with his scientific knowledge.

“The Great Creator… permit(s) me to speak to Him through… the animals, mineral and vegetable kingdoms…”

The School Days of G.W. Carver

“If you love it enough, anything will talk to you”  

In the 1880s, local white schools did not allow African American students. Therefore, even though he had a great desire for knowledge, carver attended school whenever he could.

  In 1890, Carver went to Simpson College Iowa to study art. Although African Americans were not allowed to register eventually Carver was admitted to class and he proved to be a talented artist. He paid for his tuition by doing laundry, cooking, and selling his paintings. Carver switched to agriculture studies because he saw this as a better way to contribute to his people. Carver set out to find practical ways to benefit African American farmers.

That led to enrolling at Iowa Agricultural College at Ames, Iowa. His teachers commented that Carver was “a brilliant student and collector.” He worked at the colleges’ experimental station until graduating with a Master of Science degree. He became an expert in field collecting, plant breeding, and plant diseases.

An Artistic Side

“When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world” 

When young, Carver loved to draw and paint pictures. Originally an art student in college, he switched to agricultural studies. Yet, Carver continued to paint all of his life and one of his paintings won Honorable Mention at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

Carver also would crochet, knit, and do needlework. Always practical, this enabled him to produce useful items for his friends. He learned how to dye his own thread and fibers with local trees, plants, and clay.

Carver collected local clays and extracted their pigments to make paints good enough to attract commercial paint companies. These paints were displayed in his laboratory and at county fairs. He used these paints in his artwork. He also developed house paint colors to encourage local farmers to improve the appearance of their homes. He arranged different paints into pleasing combinations for ceiling, cornices, and walls. Many buildings on the Tuskegee campus and throughout the area used these paint combinations.

Teaching Others

“Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom”

Booker T. Washington hired the best and brightest African American professionals to Tuskegee Institute. In 1896, he hired a young teaching assistant, George Washington Carver. They both believed a practical education was the best path to self-sufficiency for African Americans. Hired to head its Agriculture Department, Carver taught for 47 years, developing the department into a strong research center.

Carver spread the self-sufficiency message at schools, farms, and county fairs. Carver believed students learned best by doing. He expected students to “figure it out for themselves and to do all the common things uncommonly well.” Carver developed close personal relationships with his students, farmers, and powerful philanthropist with his engaging and charming talks and publications.

Booker T. Washington realized that Carver was a “great teacher, a great lecturer, and a great inspirer of young men and old men.”

Useful Bulletins by G.W. Carver

“In painting, the artist attempt to produce pleasing effects through the proper blending of colors. The. Cook must blend her food in such a manner as to produce dishes which are attractive. Harmony in food is just as important as harmony in colors.”   

Carver was a talented and innovative cook. He developed recipes for tasty and nutritious dishes that used local and easily-grown crops. He trained farmers to successfully rotate and cultivate new crops and encouraged better nutrition in the South. Carver developed an agricultural extension program for Alabama that used Tuskegee Institute bulletins. In these bulletins, Carver shared his recipes with farmers and housewives.

During his more than four decades at Tuskegee, Carver published 44 practical bulletins for farmers. His first bulletin in 1898 was on feeding acorns to farm animals. His final bulletin in 1943 was about the peanut. Other individual bulletins dealt with sweet potatoes, cotton, cowpeas, alfalfa, wild plums, tomatoes, ornamental plants, corn, poultry, dairying, hogs, preserving meats in hot weather, and nature study in schools.

His most popular bulletin, How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption ,  was first published in 1916 and was reprinted many times. Carver’s bulletins were not the first American agricultural bulletins devoted to peanuts, but his bulletins were more popular and widespread than others.

Agricultural School On Wheels

Booker T Washington directed his faculty to “take their teaching into the community”

To take lessons to the community, Carver designed a “movable school.” Students built a wagon named for Morris k Jesup, a New York financier who gave Carver the money to equip and operate the movable school. The first one was a horse-drawn agricultural wagon called a Jesup Wagon. Later, a truck still called a Jesup Wagon carried agricultural exhibits to county fairs and community gatherings.

By 1930, the “Booker T Washington Agricultural School on Wheels” carried a nurse, a home demonstration agent, an agricultural agent, and an architect to share the latest techniques with rural people. Eventually, educational films and lectures were presented at local churches and schools. These vehicles were the foundation of Tuskegee’s extension services. 

Research For Practical Applications

“Soil enrichment, natural fertilizer use, and crop rotation” were Carvers message to students and farmers

From 1915 to 1923, Carver developed techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated planting of cotton. Also, in the early 20th century, the boll weevil destroyed much of the cotton crops, and planters and farm workers suffered. Together with other agricultural experts, he urged farmers to restore nitrogen to their soils by practicing systematic crop rotation: alternating cotton crops with the planting of sweet potatoes, peanuts, or soybeans. These alternative crops restored nitrogen to the soil and were also good for human consumption. Following the crop rotation practice resulted in improved cotton yield and gave farmers alternative cash crops. He also began research into crop products (chemurgy), and taught generations of black students farming techniques for self-sufficiency. In these years, he became one of the most well-known African Americans of his time.

Always looking for practical solutions from his wide-ranging research, Carver experimented with seeds, soils, soil enrichment, and feed grains. All of his efforts were geared to increasing the self-sufficiency of African American farmers. Ahead of his time, Carver used plant hybridization and recycling the use of locally available technology.

Carver’s research also looked to provide a replacement for commercial products, which were generally beyond the budget of the small one-horse farmer. George W. Carver reputedly discovered three hundred uses for peanuts and hundreds more for soybean, pecans, and sweet potatoes. These alternative products included adhesives, axel grease, bleach, buttermilk, chili sauce, fuel briquettes, ink, instant coffee, linoleum, mayonnaise, meat tenderizer, metal polish, paper, plastic, pavement, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, talcum powder, and wood stain.

Later Years

“Professor Carvers Advice” – George W Carver’s syndicated newspaper column

During the last two decades of his life, Carver seemed to enjoy his celebrity status. He was often on the road promoting the Tuskegee Institute, peanut, and racial harmony. Although he only published six agricultural bulletins in 1922, he published articles in peanut industry journals and wrote a syndicated newspaper column., “Professor Carver’s Advice.” Business leaders came to seek his help, and he often responded with free advice.

From 1933 to 1935, Carver worked to develop peanut oil massages to treat polio. Ultimately researchers found the massages, not the peanut oil, provided the benefits of maintaining some mobility in paralyzed limbs.

Carver had been frugal in his life, and in his 70s, he established a legacy by creating a museum on his work and the George Washington Carver Foundation at Tuskegee to continue agricultural research. He donated $60,000 in his savings to create the foundation.

G.W. Carver Last Days

Inscribed on Mr. Carver’s tombstone are the words, “He could have added fortune to his fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world”

Upon returning home one day, Carver took a bad fall down a flight of stairs; he was found unconscious by a maid who took him to the hospital. Carver died January 5, 1943, at the age of 78 from complications (anemia) resulting from his fall. He was buried next to Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute.

National Recognition and Naming

His work, which began for the sake of the poorest farmers, paved the way for a better life for the entire South and became an inspiration to all.

George Washington Carver was born a slave. Since his owner was Moses Carver and given the first name of George, Carver referred to himself as Carver’s George. This was more a property description than a name. When George left to attend school, he slept in a barn owned by the Watkins family. Of hearing how George referred to himself, Mrs. Watkins told him that was no proper name and declared that henceforth he would be George Carver.

Like the man, Carver High school did not start with that name. The Phoenix Union High School district opted to officially embrace segregation. In 1925, to accommodate African American high school students, a bond issue was passed to erect a new high school building. The new school was named the Phoenix Union Colored High school until 1940 when the school became the Phoenix Colored High School. On January 5, 1943, George Washington Carver Died and a few months later the school took on the name of this distinguished educator, scientist, and innovator. In 1953, educational segregation was ruled unconstitutional in Arizona and the school closed the following year.

Why are so many schools, parks, and other landmarks named in honor of Carver? Carver came to stand as a symbol of the intellectual achievements of African Americans. He brought about a significant advance in agricultural training in an era when agriculture was the largest single occupation of Americans. It is so often said that Carver saved Southern agriculture and helped feed the country. His great desire was simply to serve humanity; and his work, which began for the sake of the poorest black sharecroppers, pave the way for a better life for the entire South and became an inspiration to all.

GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER NATIONAL MONUMENT

George Washington Carver National Monument orientation video. (NPS Movie 5min)

Our Monument to George Washington Carver

“How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”

The George Washington Carver statue greeting visitors to the Carver Museum is an exhibit all to itself. The sculpture, Mr. Ed Dwight, is an internationally acclaimed sculptor whose works grace various venues around the United States. Among his works are major African American historic figures.

The Carver Statue was unveiled on February 15, 2004, in a ceremony where Governor Janet Napolitano, among many others, addressed the crowd. The artist, Ed Dwight, spoke movingly before the unveiling. There were musical presentations and acknowledgments of many distinguished guests. Visitors who have viewed and photographed the statue have praised its artistry.

The Carver Statue is an artistic achievement and a worthy monument to its namesake. This exquisite work faithfully captures Carver’s delicate features and somehow reflects the genius and hope that defined the man.

Explore Our Virtual Exhibits

Help Us Preserve Our History!

Donate $1 donate $5 donate $10 donate $25 donate $50, 415 e. grant street phoenix, az 85004, mailing address: po box 20491 phoenix, az 85036-0491, office hours, monday-thursday 9:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. friday 9:00 a.m.-noon, museum hours, the museum is open for scheduled tours on mondays and thursdays, based on availability. all tours must be arranged in advance., get involved, become a volunteer, join our board of directors.

The Carver Museum © 2023. All Rights Reserved. Website Sponsored by Compass CBS . Privacy Policy / Terms of Use

George Washington Carver: Biography, Inventions & Quotes

George Washington Carver was a prominent American scientist and inventor in the early 1900s. Carver developed hundreds of products using the peanut, sweet potatoes and soybeans. He also was a champion of crop rotation and agricultural education. Born into slavery, today he is an icon of American ingenuity and the transformative potential of education.

Carver was likely born in January or June of 1864. His exact birth date is unknown because he was born a slave on the farm of Moses Carver in Diamond, Missouri. Very little is known about George’s father, who may have been a field hand named Giles who was killed in a farming accident before George was born. George’s mother was named Mary; he had several sisters, and a brother named James.

When George was only a few weeks old, Confederate raiders invaded the farm, kidnapping George, his mother and sister. They were sold in Kentucky, and only George was found by an agent of Moses Carver and returned to Missouri. Carver and his wife, Susan, raised George and James and taught them to read.

James soon gave up the lessons, preferring to work in the fields with his foster father. George was not a strong child and was not able to work in the fields, so Susan taught the boy to help her in the kitchen garden and to make simple herbal medicines. George became fascinated by plants and was soon experimenting with natural pesticides, fungicides and soil conditioners. Local farmers began to call George “the plant doctor,” as he was able to tell them how to improve the health of their garden plants.

At his wife’s insistence, Moses found a school that would accept George as a student.  George walked the 10 miles several times a week to attend the School for African American Children in Neosho, Kan. When he was about 13 years old, he left the farm to move to Ft. Scott, Kan., but he later moved to Minneapolis, Kan., to attend high school. He earned much of his tuition by working in the kitchen of a local hotel. He concocted new recipes, which he entered in local baking contests. He graduated from Minneapolis High School in 1880 and set his sights on college.

College years

George first applied to Highland Presbyterian College in Kansas. The college was impressed by George’s application essay and granted him a full scholarship. When he arrived at the school, however, he was turned away — they hadn’t realized he was black. Over the next few years, George worked at a variety of jobs. He homesteaded a farm in Kansas, worked a ranch in New Mexico, and worked for the railroads, always saving money and looking for a college that would accept him.

In 1888, George enrolled as the first black student at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. He began studying art and piano, expecting to earn a teaching degree. Carver later said, “The kind of people at Simpson College made me believe I was a human being.”  Recognizing the unusual attention to detail in his paintings of plants and flowers his instructor, Etta Budd, encouraged him to apply to Iowa State Agricultural School (now Iowa State University) to study Botany.

At Iowa State, Carver was the first African American student to earn his Bachelor of Science in 1894. His professors were so impressed by his work on the fungal infections common to soybean plants that he was asked to remain as part of the faculty to work on his master’s degree (awarded in 1896). Working as director of the Iowa State Experimental Station, Carver discovered two types of fungi, which were subsequently named for him. Carver also began experiments in crop rotation, using soy plantings to replace nitrogen in depleted soil. Before long, Carver became well known as a leading agricultural scientist.

Tuskegee Institute

In April 1896, Carver received a letter from Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee Institute, one of the first African American colleges in the United States. “I cannot offer you money, position or fame,” read this letter. “The first two you have. The last from the position you now occupy you will no doubt achieve. These things I now ask you to give up. I offer you in their place: work – hard work, the task of bringing people from degradation, poverty and waste to full manhood. Your department exists only on paper and your laboratory will have to be in your head.” Washington’s offer was $125.00 per month (a substantial cut from Carver’s Iowa State salary) and the luxury of two rooms for living quarters (most Tuskegee faculty members had just one). It was an offer that George Carver accepted immediately and the place where he worked for the remainder of his life.

Carver was determined to use his knowledge to help poor farmers of the rural South. He began by introducing the idea of crop rotation. In the Tuskegee experimental fields, Carver settled on peanuts because it was a simple crop to grow and had excellent nitrogen fixating properties to improve soil depleted by growing cotton. He took his lessons to former slaves turned sharecroppers by inventing the Jessup Wagon, a horse-drawn classroom and laboratory for demonstrating soil chemistry. Farmers were ecstatic with the large cotton crops resulting from the cotton/peanut rotation, but were less enthusiastic about the huge surplus of peanuts that built up and began to rot in local storehouses.

Peanut products

Carver heard the complaints and retired to his laboratory for a solid week, during which he developed several new products that could be produced from peanuts. When he introduced these products to the public in a series of simple brochures, the market for peanuts skyrocketed. Today, Carver is credited with saving the agricultural economy of the rural South.

From his work at Tuskegee, Carver developed approximately 300 products made from peanuts; these included: flour, paste, insulation, paper, wall board, wood stains, soap, shaving cream and skin lotion. He experimented with medicines made from peanuts, which included antiseptics, laxatives and a treatment for goiter.

What about peanut butter?

Contrary to popular belief, while Carver developed a version of peanut butter, he did not invent it. The Incas developed a paste made out of ground peanuts as far back as 950 B.C. In the United States, according to the National Peanut Board , Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, of cereal fame, invented a version of peanut butter in 1895.

A St. Louis physician may have developed peanut butter as a protein substitute for people who had poor teeth and couldn't chew meat. Peanut butter was introduced at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904.

Aiding the war effort

During World War I, Carver was asked to assist Henry Ford in producing a peanut-based replacement for rubber. Also during the war, when dyes from Europe became difficult to obtain, he helped the American textile industry by developing more than 30 colors of dye from Alabama soils.

After the War, George added a "W" to his name to honor Booker T. Washington. Carver continued to experiment with peanut products and became interested in sweet potatoes, another nitrogen-fixing crop. Products he invented using sweet potatoes include: wood fillers, more than 73 dyes, rope, breakfast cereal, synthetic silk, shoe polish and molasses. He wrote several brochures on the nutritional value of sweet potatoes and the protein found in peanuts, including recipes he invented for use of his favorite plants. He even went to India to confer with Mahatma Gandhi on nutrition in developing nations.

In 1920, Carver delivered a speech to the new Peanut Growers Association of America. This organization was advocating that Congress pass a tariff law to protect the new American industry from imported crops. As a result of this speech, he testified before Congress in 1921 and the tariff was passed in 1922.  In 1923, Carver was named as Speaker for the United States Commission on Interracial Cooperation, a post he held until 1933. In 1935, he was named head of the Division of Plant Mycology and Disease Survey for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. By 1938, largely due to Carver’s influence, peanuts had grown to be a $200-million-per-year crop in the United States and were the chief agricultural product grown in the state of Alabama.

Carver's legacy

Carver died on Jan. 5, 1943. At his death, he left his life savings, more than $60,000, to found the George Washington Carver Institute for Agriculture at Tuskegee. In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated funds to erect a monument at Diamond, Missouri, in his honor.

Commemorative postage stamps were issued in 1948 and again in 1998. A George Washington Carver half-dollar coin was minted between 1951 and 1954. There are two U.S. military vessels named in his honor.

There are also numerous scholarships and schools named for him. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Simpson College. Since his exact birth date is unknown, Congress has designated January 5 as George Washington Carver Recognition Day.

Carver only patented three of his inventions. In his words, “It is not the style of clothes one wears, neither the kind of automobile one drives, nor the amount of money one has in the bank that counts. These mean nothing. It is simply service that measures success.” 

Carver quotes

"Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses."

"Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater."

"Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom."

"When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."

"Where there is no vision, there is no hope."

"Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise."

"There is no short cut to achievement. Life requires thorough preparation - veneer isn't worth anything."

"Learn to do common things uncommonly well; we must always keep in mind that anything that helps fill the dinner pail is valuable."  

Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now

Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.

You can change your personality intentionally, research shows

Science news this week: A lost Biblical tree and a memory crystal that could 'survive to the end of the universe'

Man developed a 'headspin hole' after years of breakdancing, case report says

Most Popular

• 2 Parasitic worms cause terrible diseases — could the viruses they carry be to blame?
• 3 Early development is inherently 'chaotic,' new atlas of mammal embryos reveals
• 4 Google's Sycamore quantum computer chip can now outperform the fastest supercomputers, new study suggests
• 5 Toothbrushes and showerheads are teeming with viruses unknown to science, study shows

How George Washington Carver Went From Enslaved to Educational Pioneer

One of the most accomplished and famous people of the 20th century, George Washington Carver overcame nearly every obstacle placed in his path to fulfill his lifelong passion for learning, using his hard-earned education to improve the lives of African Americans, and of people living in the deep South.

Carver was born enslaved

No documents survive detailing Carver’s birth, but he was likely born around 1864 or 1865, on the farm of Moses Carver, near Diamond Grove, Missouri. His mother, Mary, was owned by Moses Carver, and his father, who died either before or after George’s birth, was enslaved on a nearby farm.

Shortly after his birth, Mary and George were kidnapped by Confederate raiders who hoped to sell them for profit. Moses attempted to track them down but was only able to locate young George, and he never saw his mother again.

Freed after the end of the Civil War but a sickly youth, George and his brother Jim were raised by Moses and his wife, Susan. The first in a series of couples who recognized and nurtured George’s native abilities and talents, they taught him to read and encouraged his early interest in plants and nature, with Carver working alongside Susan in her garden, and wandering the nearby woods and fields, collecting specimens.

READ MORE: Did George Washington Carver Invent Peanut Butter?

He didn’t begin formal education until he was about 12

Unable to attend the local white people-only elementary school, George left the Carvers farm to pursue his education in Neosho, Missouri, where he lived and worked with a Black couple, Mariah and Andrew Watkins. Carver learned more about plants and herbs from Mariah’s work as a midwife, but he found himself disappointed in the lack of academic rigor in the local Black school.

By the late 1870s, Carver was on the move again. He joined a number of other African-Americans who decided to move west, primarily to Kansas, as part of a mass migration known as the “Exodusters.” He supported himself through odd jobs, before finally graduating from Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas.

When Carver was denied admission to college, he educated himself

Carver received a full scholarship to Kansas’ Highland College, but when he showed up on campus to enroll, school administers refused to admit him — claiming they had been unaware of his race.

Once again, Carver took matters into his own hands. He settled a homesteading claim, where he dedicated his time to assemble an extensive collection of botany and geological specimens.

He eventually made his way to Iowa, where the bright young man once again found support from a local couple, John and Helen Millholland. They encouraged him to enroll in Simpson College, a small school open to all races. Despite his later fame as an agriculturalist, Carver initially studied music and art. (He even showed some of his paintings at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.)

He was the first Black student — and faculty member — at Iowa State University

Carver’s art teacher at Simpson, Etta Budd, helped push him towards his life’s work. Fearing that Carver would struggle to make a living as a Black artist, and knowing of his lifelong love of plants, Budd convinced Carver to switch his course of study to botany and to transfer to Iowa State University (then known as Iowa State Agricultural College).

Carver was accepted as the school’s first Black student and received his bachelor’s degree in agricultural sciences in 1894 when he was around 30 years old. Recognizing his talents, the school asked him to stay on as an instructor while he obtained his master’s degree, which he finished in 1896, becoming the first African-American to earn an advanced degree in the field.

Carver spent more than 40 years at Tuskegee

Shortly after obtaining his master’s degree, Carver was lured away from Iowa by Booker T. Washington . Washington was a prominent educator and the founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University ) in Alabama.

The school initially focused on offering vocational training for Black people, and in 1896, Washington pursued Carver to lead its new agricultural department.

Although he originally planned on staying at Tuskegee for just a few years, he remained there for the rest of his career. Despite initially limited funding, he soon created a thriving research institute and became a beloved and inspiring teacher to his students.

Like Washington, Carver advocated for increased educational opportunities for African-Americans, although both men were criticized by other Black leaders, including W.E.B. Du Bois , who preached a more aggressive, confrontational approach to racism and segregation in America, and attacked Washington and Carver for their focus on vocational skills as a means of advancement.

READ MORE: George Washington Carver’s Powerful Circle of Friends

Carver’s 'movable schools' helped save Southern farmers

Carver became a pioneer of emerging agricultural theories like soil conservation and crop rotation, both desperately needed due to an overreliance on growing cotton that left the soil on many southern farms dangerously depleted.

Carver taught agricultural extension programs at Tuskegee and began his decades-long research experiments with alternative crops like sweet potatoes and, most famously, peanuts, developing more than 300 different uses and earning him lasting fame as the “peanut man."

But Carver realized that low literacy rates across the Deep South and a lack of educational opportunities made it difficult to spread his message where it was needed most. He offered night school classes and abbreviated agricultural conferences held during non-harvesting seasons.

Beginning in 1906, Carver helped organize a series of agricultural schools on wheels that traveled around Alabama offering practical, hands-on lessons and information on everything from crop, seed and fertilizer selection to dairy farming, nutrition and the best types of animals to breed in particular regions. These "moveable schools" reached thousands of people each month and were eventually expanded to include sanitation demonstrations and registered nurses who offered medical advice and assistance.

Carver patented very few inventions, preferring to allow others to benefit from his work. His focus on the importance of education remained a lifelong passion. Upon his death in 1943, he bequeathed $60,000 to establish the George Washington Carver Foundation, which provides funding for Black researchers at Tuskegee.

Black History

MLK Almost Didn’t Say “I Have a Dream”

Kamala Harris

Ray Charles

Whoopi Goldberg

Stevie Wonder

Sylvia Rivera

Jesse Owens

Opal Lee: The “Grandmother of Juneteenth”

13 Powerful Marsha P. Johnson Quotes

Marsha P. Johnson

Naomi Osaka