George Washington Carver, Who Was He?

Question

Please no horrible replies, this is an honest question and I want to know how many people know their history. Thanx in advance for your answers.

Answer 1

George Washington Carver (c. 1864 – January 5, 1943) was an African American botanist who worked in agricultural extension at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, and who taught former slaves farming techniques for self-sufficiency. He is also widely credited for inventing hundreds of uses for the peanut and other plants, although he often left no formulas or procedures and his exact output is hard to ascertain.

Rise to fame
In 1896, Carver was invited to lead the Agriculture Department at the five year old Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, later Tuskegee University, by its founder, Booker T. Washington, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Carver accepted the position, and remained there for 47 years, until his death in 1943.

Carver had an interest in helping poor Southern farmers who were working poor quality soils that had been depleted of nutrients by repeated plantings of cotton crops. He and other agricultural workers urged farmers to restore nitrogen to their soils by practicing systematic crop rotation, alternating cotton crops with plantings of sweet potatoes or legumes (such as peanuts, soybeans and cowpeas) that were also sources of protein. Following the crop rotation practice resulted in improved cotton yields and gave farmers new foods and alternative cash crops to sell. Carver had graduated with a B.S and later, an M.S., from Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, (later Iowa State University) and in order to train farmers to successfully rotate crops and cultivate the new foods, developed an agricultural extension program for Alabama that was similar to the one at Iowa State. In addition, he founded an industrial research laboratory where he and assistants worked to popularize use of the new plants by developing hundreds of applications for them through original research and also by more deeply examining recipes and applications that they collected from others.

Peanut specimen collected by CarverCarver developed three hundred applications for peanuts and 118 for sweet potatoes, (http://www.npg.si.edu/edu/brush/guide/unit2/carver.html) including bleach, metal polish, paper, plastic, glue for postage stamps, printer's ink, plant milk, cooking oils, flour, instant coffee, mayonnaise, meat tenderizer, cheese, dyes, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, talcum powder, wood stains, varnish, soap, vinegar and cooking sauces. He made similar investigations into uses for cowpeas, soybeans and pecans.

While he is often credited with the invention of peanut butter (which is essentially a process rather than an invention, as it is made from crushed peanuts with perhaps salt or sugar added), Carver did not seek a patent on it, or on any of his other inventions or applications, aside from only three cosmetic application patents, because he believed that food plants were to be used as gifts from God, and not patented and commercialized for personal gain.

Until 1915, Carver was not widely known for his agricultural research, however. He was the best known agriculturalist and one of the best-known African-Americans of his era after President Theodore Roosevelt publicly admired his work, and in 1916 was made a member of the Royal Society of Arts in England, one of only a handful of Americans at that time to receive this honor. By 1920 a market for peanuts had developed in the United States, but domestic peanut farmers were being undercut with imported peanuts from the Republic of China. Southern farmers came together in 1920 to plead their cause before a Congressional committee hearings on the tariff. Carver was elected, without hesitation, to speak at the hearings. On arrival, Carver was mocked by surprised southern farmers, but he was not deterred and began to explain some of the many uses for the peanut. Initially given ten minutes to present, the now spellbound committee extended his time again and again. The committee rose in applause as he finished his presentation, and the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922 included a tariff on imported peanuts. Carver's presentation to Congress had made him famous, and his intelligence, clear communication, and natural amiability and courtesy delighted the public. He turned down a salary that would be the modern equivalent of almost a million dollars a year ($100,000 at that time) in order to continue his research and benefit all people. His less well known, but also outstanding contributions to agriculture, such as crop rotation systems for soil enrichment, revolutionized southern farming, and are employed today throughout the nation and abroad.

Following Carver's rise to fame, business leaders came to seek his help, and he often responded with free advice. Three American presidents — Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Roosevelt — met with him, and the Crown Prince of Sweden studied with him for three weeks. Carver's best known guest was Henry Ford, who built a laboratory for Carver. In 1942, the two men denied that they were working together on a solution to the wartime rubber shortage. Carver also did extensive work with soy, which he and Ford considered as a fuel alternative.

In 1923, Carver received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP, awarded annually for outstanding achievement. In 1928, Simpson College bestowed Carver with an honorary doctorate. In 1940, Carver established the George Washington Carver Foundation at Tuskegee University. In 1941, the George Washington Carver Museum was dedicated at the Tuskegee Institute. In 1942, Carver received the Roosevelt Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Southern Agriculture.

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Answer 2

Short answer = Born a slave in Diamond Grove Missouri, managed to get accepted to a university, studied AG. Developed 300 uses for peanuts, 75 for sweet potato. Developed crop rotation plans. All in all a very smart man.

Answer 3

In the simplest terms he was an African American farmer who not only invented peanut butter but was also the first do extensive research on the properties of nuts and other like plants among other achievements.
In a nut shell he made a lot head way for the black movement.

Answer 4

The man who invented a way to make peanut butter from peanuts.

Answer 5

George Washington Carver started popularizing uses for peanut products including peanut butter, paper, ink, and oils beginning in 1880.

It is rare to find a man of the caliber of George Washington Carver. A man who would decline an invitation to work for a salary of more than $100,000 a year (almost a million today) to continue his research on behalf of his countrymen.

Agricultural chemist, Carver discovered three hundred uses for peanuts and hundreds more uses for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes. Among the listed items that he suggested to southern farmers to help them economically were his recipes and improvements to/for: adhesives, axle 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. Only three patents were every issued to Carver.

George Washington Carver was born in 1864 near Diamond Grove, Missouri on the farm of Moses Carver. He was born into difficult and changing times near the end of the Civil War. The infant George and his mother kidnapped by Confederate night-raiders and possibly sent away to Arkansas. Moses Carver found and reclaimed George after the war but his mother had disappeared forever. The identity of Carver's father remains unknown, although he believed his father was a slave from a neighboring farm. Moses and Susan Carver reared George and his brother as their own children. It was on the Moses' farm where George first fell in love with nature, where he earned the nickname 'The Plant Doctor' and collected in earnest all manner of rocks and plants.

He began his formal education at the age of twelve, which required him to leave the home of his adopted parents. Schools segregated by race at that time with no school available for black students near Carver's home. He moved to Newton County in southwest Missouri, where he worked as a farm hand and studied in a one-room schoolhouse. He went on to attend Minneapolis High School in Kansas. College entrance was a struggle, again because of racial barriers. At the age of thirty, Carver gained acceptance to Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, where he was the first black student. Carver had to study piano and art and the college did not offer science classes. Intent on a science career, he later transferred to Iowa Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) in 1891, where he gained a Bachelor of Science degree in 1894 and a Master of Science degree in bacterial botany and agriculture in 1897. Carver became a member of the faculty of the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanics (the first black faculty member for Iowa College), teaching classes about soil conservation and chemurgy.

In 1897, Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute for Negroes, convinced Carver to come south and serve as the school's Director of Agriculture. Carver remained on the faculty until his death in 1943. (Read the pamphlet - Help For Hard Times - written by Carver and forwarded by Booker T. Washington as an example of the educational material provided to farmers by Carver.)

Answer 6

He invented peanut butter.

Answer 7

A dude...........very sure, he was a dude.