George Washington Carver

4 Pages 1096 Words

George Washington Carver is perhaps to this day the nation's biggest known African American scientist. Between 1890 and 1910, the cotton crop had been devastated by an insect called the boll weevil. Carver advised to plant peanuts instead. Before long, he developed more than 300 different products that could be made from the peanut. Everything from milk to printer's ink.

He was an agricultural chemist, agronomist, and experimenter whose development of new products came from peanuts , sweet potatoes, and soybeans helped revolutionize the agricultural economy of the South. For most of his career he taught and did research at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Tuskegee, Ala.
Carver was the son of a slave woman who was owned by Moses Carver. During the Civil War, slave owners found it difficult to hold on to slaves in the border state of Missouri. So Moses Carver sent his slaves, including carver and his mother, to Arkansas. After the war, Moses Carver learned that all his former slaves had disappeared except for the kid named George. Very sick, the motherless child was returned to his former master's home and nursed back to health. The boy had a good sense of color and form and learned to draw, later he devoted a lot of time to painting flowers, plants, and landscapes. Though the Carvers told him that he was no longer a slave, he remained on their plantation until he was about 10 or 12 years old, when he left to get an education. He spent a lot fo time wandering about, working with his hands and developing a interest in plants and animals.
By both books and experience, George acquired a small education while doing whatever work came to hand in order to live. He supported himself with a bunch of different jobs that included general household worker, hotel cook, laundryman, farm hand, and homesteader. In his late 20s he managed to get a high school education in Minneapolis, Kan., while wor...