By Lenora Hobbs
Published: Sep/Oct 2001
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Carver found more than 300 uses for the peanut. /National Park Service photos
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The bronze statue of a boy holding uprooted plants and gazing skyward sits near a wooden footbridge. It is one of two statues of George Washington Carver at the Carver National Monument located two miles west of Diamond, Mo. Nestled beneath old trees dappling the ground with shade, the statue captures a moment when Carver, while wandering his foster parents’ Missouri farm, rejoiced in nature’s beauty and in the spiritual connection he discerned between God and all living things.
The boy became perhaps the best known black American of his time, the first honored with a national monument, established by Congress on July 14, 1943. Long-time friend, Henry Ford, two years earlier proclaimed Carver “the world’s greatest living scientist.” However, Carver said, “I am no great person. I am no great scientist. I have only been able to point the way in a few things. After me will come those who read and interpret the signs…I am only the trailblazer.”
His accomplishments include discovering several new species of fungi in a study for the U.S. government. His research led to about 300 uses for peanuts and more than 100 for sweet potatoes, tomatoes and soybeans. He also was an artist and musician.
However, recent biographers assert his research never met standards of scientific inquiry. Critics said Carter was a self-promoter and sometimes deferred to whites. How did Carver gain national fame that lead to a monument from his government?
Carver’s ability to establish intimacy with almost everyone he met served him well. Despite being born into slavery in 1864 and orphaned as an infant, Carver always was eager to learn and work hard. Barred from the local school at the age of 12, he moved to Neosho, Mo., to attend Lincoln School for Blacks. In his early teens, Carver moved to Kansas to further his education. At a white school in Minneapolis, Kan., his obvious academic talents won over his teachers.
Wherever he went, he taught Sunday school classes, played music for dances, joined local literary societies and developed a clientele among neighbors with his ability to diagnose and treat plant diseases. Despite poverty and racial discrimination, Carver found people at every stage of his quest to help him achieve his goals.
Opportunities in Kansas dried up for Carver, and he moved to Winterset, Iowa, where he met the Milhollands, a well-placed couple who told him about Simpson College in Iowa, which had open enrollment. An art teacher there recognized Carver’s talent but believed his genius with plants would lead to a better career, encouraging him to apply to Iowa Agricultural College, now Iowa State University.
He earned his undergraduate (1894) and graduate degrees (1896) in agriculture science, and became the first black to serve on the school’s faculty.
Carver tutored young Henry Wallace, son of a professor, and later Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of agriculture and vice president; they remained friends during Carver’s lifetime. Wallace once wrote, “The outstanding thing to me about Carver is the depth of his faith in human beings and in God. Everything else is a by-product of this central fact in his life.”
The chemurgy movement, a new science intended to use chemistry to improve agriculture and industry, led to a lifelong friendship with Henry Ford. Ford honored Carver with the George Washington Carver School on his Ways plantation, a modern laboratory at Dearborn, and a memorial.
Carver developed a support network with dozens of people, most not as famous as Wallace or Ford. But he never forgot his teachers, fellow students or pupils.
Linda O. McMurry, author of the Carver biography, “George Washington Carver, Scientist and Symbol,” wrote, “. . . most of the people responsible for Carver’s rise to fame did not consider him merely a symbol or a token black. They viewed him as a remarkable individual.”
Carver’s humanistic philosophy underlaid everything he did, including devotion to others: All living things were connected, interdependent and meant to live in harmony, according to God’s design. That thought makes Carver modern and relevant.
Lenora Hobbs is a contributor from St. Louis, Mo.
