Voices of Freedom: George Washington Carver
- Jun 12
- 2 min read
Highlighting Juneteenth
George Washington Carver
(1864-1943)
Agronomist, Botanist
“Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.”
George Washington Carver was born into slavery in Missouri. The exact year of his birth is not known. His father died before he was born. After slavery was abolished, George and his brother James were raised by his family’s former “masters”, Moses and Susan Carver, as their own children. The Carvers taught George to read and encouraged him to acquire an education.
Starting in his early teens, George Carver wandered through the Midwest, trying to further his education. For a time, he homesteaded in Kansas, growing vegetables, grains, and fruit on a 17-acre plot. In 1890, Carver studied music and art at Simpson College in Iowa, where he showed a strong talent for painting plants. A teacher encouraged him to enroll in the Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) in Ames, Iowa, where he was the first student of color. There, Carver acquired his bachelor’s degree in agriculture in 1894, and his master’s in 1896.
In 1896, Booker T. Washington recruited Carver to head the agriculture department at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where he taught for the next 47 years. At Tuskegee, Carver published dozens of agricultural bulletins that gave practical advice to tenant farmers and sharecroppers. In particular, Carver promoted crop rotation and planting sweet potatoes and legumes, especially peanuts and chickpeas, to enrich soil that had been worn out by growing cotton. He designed a mobile classroom on a wagon that was driven through rural areas offered free lessons on agriculture and nutrition. He also developed products from legumes, leading him to be dubbed “Mr Peanut.” He was an early conservationist, and one of the first promoters of what would later be called “ecology.”
Carver’s work brought him great fame and numerous awards. Among his admirers were President Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Ford, and Henry Wallace, a developer of hybrid varieties of corn who later served as vice president during Franklin Roosevelt’s third term. He died in 1943 due to the complications from a fall.
Gary Kremer’s book George Washington Carver In His Own Words is available through the Kenosha Public Library.
