George Washington Carver was born in Diamond Grove, Missouri during the spring of 1864 or 1865. Like many slaves, he was uncertain of his birth date. His mother, Mary, was a slave who belonged to Moses and Susan Carver. As an infant, slave raiders kidnapped his mother. The childless carvers reared George and his older brother, James. Growing up, George was captivated by plants. Many neighbors referred to him as the “Plant Doctor”. Since Carver was an African American, he was not accepted at any local schools, therefore he had to attend school eight miles away from home.

He did very well in school. In 1885 he was accepted to Highland College in Kansas. However, race became an issue again and they took away the offer. He became very discouraged and chose to travel abroad until 1890 where he found himself in Iowa. He decided to enroll in Simpson College in Indianola. One of his teachers recognized his many talents and encouraged him to transfer to Iowa State College at Ames, which he did in May 1891. At Iowa State, Carver found that he was especially gifted in plant hybridization and the study of fungi.

In 1894, Carver earned a bachelor of science degree and, in 1896, a Master of Science degree in agriculture and bacterial botany. That same year, Booker T. Washington offered Carver a job teaching at Tuskegee Institute. During his first few years at Tuskegee, he made many improvements in the agricultural program. With the help of other colleagues, he created the Farmers’ Institute. This was a group of farmers who met monthly to acquire agricultural advice from the Tuskegee staff.

As well as creating the Farmers’ Institute, Carver also helped the farmers of Alabama and the southern states a great deal. An insect called the boll weevil became an enormous threat to the cotton fields of southern United States. Carver recommended to these farmers that they should substitute their cotton crops with sweet potatoes and, the more successful recommendation, peanuts. This switch would provide farmers another source of income and would also help to prevent the spread of the insect.

The one problem with this solution was that no one knew what to do with all the peanut crops. Carver was quoted as saying: “we can learn to synthesize materials for every human need from the things that grow. ” So that is what he did. In total, Carver was able to create close to three hundred different products from the peanut plant. These wide variety of products include dyes, ink, insulation, cosmetics, stock feed, medicines, glue, soap, and peanut milk. Although most of his products never became commercially sold, Carver became widely known as the “Peanut Man”.

He also created nearly one hundred uses for the sweet potato crops. Even though George Washington Carver was well known throughout parts of the south, his real rise to fame started in 1916. Carver was invited to join the Royal Society for the Arts. Shortly afterward, the Carver Products Company was founded to market his many products. Carver was also honored with the medal of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. George Washington Carver died on January 5, 1943.

He inspired both young and old people, both black and white in a number of positive ways. He will be remembered particularly for the significant scientific contributions he made to agriculture and crop diversification. He contributed financially to fund The George Washington Carver Foundation, an agency which still exists at Tuskegee Institute today. It is believed that his race prevented him from being given the same opportunities as white scientists thus preventing him from making more momentous discoveries in the areas of mycology or plant hybridization.

‘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. ‘–George Washington Carver. George Washington Carver paved the way for agriculturists to come. He always went for the best throughout his whole life. He didn’t just keep the best for himself; he gave it away freely for the benefit of mankind. Not only did he achieve his goal as the world’s greatest agriculturist, but also he achieved the equality and respect of all.

George Washington Carver was born near Diamond Grove, Missouri in 1864. He was born on a farm owned by Moses and Susan Carver. He was born a sick, weak baby and was unable to work on the farm. His weak condition started when a raiding party kidnapped him with his mom. He was returned to the Carver’s farm with whooping cough. His mother had disappeared and the identity of his father was unknown, so the Carver’s were left to care for him and his brother James. Here on the farm is where George first fell in love with plants and Mother Nature.

He had his own little garden in the nearby woods where he would talk to the plants. He soon earned the nickname, The Plant Doctor, and was producing his own medicines right on the farm. George’s formal education started when he was twelve. He had, however, tried to get into schools in the past but was denied on the basis of race. No black school was available locally so he was forced to move. He said Good-bye to his adopted parents, Susan and Moses, and headed to Newton County in southwest Missouri. Here is where the path of his education began.

He studied in a one-room schoolhouse and worked on a farm to pay for it. He ended up, shortly after, moving with another family to Fort Scott in Kansas. In Kansas, he worked as a baker in a kitchen while he attended the High School. He paid for his schooling with the money he earned from winning bake-off contests. From there he moved all over bouncing from school to school. College entrance was a struggle again because of racial barriers. 2 At the age of thirty he gained acceptance to Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa.

He was the first black student accepted to this college. Here he studied piano and art. With his ambition to pursue a science major, he transformed to Iowa Agricultural College (Iowa State) in 1891. He received his Bachelors of Science in 1894 and his Masters in bacterial botany and agriculture in 1897. He learned about fungi and the disease it causes. During his research he became known to agricultural centers all over the country. He went on to become the first black faculty member at Iowa State. He taught classes about soil conservation and chemurgy. In 1896, Booker T.

Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute for Negroes, convinced Carver to go south and serve as the Tuskegee school director of agriculture. Here he would remain for the rest of his life. Here, in Alabama, he did experiments with peanuts, sweet potatoes, pecans, peas, and soybeans. He soon developed his crop rotation method where he alternated the soil depleting cotton crops with these soil-enriching crops. Since America depended mostly on southern agriculture at this time, his achievement was very important and valuable to southern farmers.

Since a combination of cotton, tobacco, and the Civil War had depleted the soil of rich nutrients, Carver convinced all of the southern farmers to adopt his technique. This helped the south to recover and produce not only more, but bigger crops. He continued constantly working with peanuts, sweet potatoes, and pecans trying to produce new products. He developed more than 300 products from the peanut (including Peanut Butter), 175 from the sweet potato, and 60 from the pecan. He extracted blue, purple, and red pigments from the clay soil of Alabama.

He researched the manufacture of synthetic marble from green wood shavings, rope from cornstalk fibers, and veneers from the palmetto root. During WWI, he worked to replace the textile dyes that were being imported from Europe. He ended up producing and replacing over 500 different shades. In 1927, he invented a process for producing paints and stains from soybeans. Three different patents were issued: US 1,522,176 Cosmetics and Producing the Same. Jan. 6,1925 George Washington Carver. Tuskegee, Alabama. US 1,541,478 Paint and Stain and Producing the Same.

June 9, 1925 George Washington Carver. Tuskegee, Alabama US 1,632,365 Producing Paints and Stains June 14, 1927 George Washington Carver. Tuskegee, Alabama. 3 He did not patent or sell hundreds of his other inventions and products but gave them away for the world to benefit from them. His most famous peanut product was peanut butter. He received his doctorate from Simpson College in 1928. He became a member of the Royal Society of Arts in London, England. He also received, by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Spingarn Medal. He became part of the U.

S. Department of agriculture in 1935. In 1939, he was awarded the Roosevelt Medal for restoring southern agriculture. George Washington Carver died at the age of 79 (1864-1943) in 1943 from anemia. He donated his whole life savings to Tuskegee University for further study in agriculture. For his great accomplishments he was honored with many things. In 1951, a national monument near his home was formed and named after him. This was the first national monument to be named after an African American. He was given a commemorative stamp and was induced into the NY University of Hall of Fame.

He was the second African American to make it into the hall of fame. George Washington Carver, in the end, achieved his goal as the greatest agriculturists and so much more. Everything that he invented, he invented for the benefit of mankind. He even gave away well over half of his invented products. But most important, he changed the south from being a one-crop land of cotton, to multi-crop farmlands, and gave the farmers hundreds of profitable uses for their new crops. 4 Truly an American hero of agriculturists, he paved and planted the road for future one’s to come.