George Washington Carver: Chemist,
Teacher, Symbol
"No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and legitimate reasons for
having passed through it." George Washington Carver, May 25, 19151
There is the popular image of George Washington Carver known to every schoolchild in the United States: he was born a slave,
worked hard to gain an education and become a scientist, taught at Tuskegee Institute, became the Peanut Man who discovered
myriad uses for the lowly legume, and, late in life, served as a racial symbol for blacks and whites. For African Americans, before
the civil rights movement, Carver was a role model to emulate. For whites, he was proof that America was a land of opportunity for
everyone.
Of course, the story is not that simple. Carver's origins are shrouded in mystery, his role at Tuskegee one of frequent conflict,
especially with the famed founder of the Institute, Booker T. Washington, and his accomplishments as a scientist frequently
maligned. And the image of Carver as a racial role model has changed with the times.
Yet, there is no denying Carver's role in developing new uses for Southern agricultural crops such as peanuts, sweet potatoes, and
soybeans. In addition, Carver taught poor Southern farmers methods of soil improvement.
The American Chemical Society designated the agricultural research of George Washington Carver as a National Historic Chemical
Landmark at Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama, on January 27, 2005.
1 Cited in Gary Kremer, ed., George Washington Carver: In His Own Words (Columbia, Missouri: The University of Missouri Press,
1987), p. 1.
The early years
"There are some things an orphan child does not want to remember…" George Washington Carver to Mrs. Guy
Holt, July 23, 19401
George Washington Carver guarded his image carefully. While he did not write extensively about his youth, he
did leave behind snippets describing his hard early years. These writings tell of a poor orphan who sought
knowledge and hungered for scientific discovery but who was sickly and weak. Carver's early years were indeed
difficult, but he seems to have exaggerated his frailty. For example, in an autobiographical sketch he wrote in
1897, just as he was beginning his teaching career at the Tuskegee Institute, Carver claimed that when he was a
child his "body was very feble [sic] and it was a constant warfare between life and death to see who would gain
the mastery." Two paragraphs later comes this sentence: "Day after day I spent in the woods alone in order to
collect my floral beautis [sic] and put them in my little garden…"2
In a 1922 sketch Carver wrote "I was born in Diamond Grove, Mo., about the close of the great Civil War, in a
little one-roomed log shanty, on the home of Mr. Moses Carver, a German by birth and the owner of my mother,
my father being the property of Mr. Grant, who owned the adjoining plantation."3 Carver was never clear about
when he was born: sometimes writing "about 1865," or "near the end of the war," or "just as freedom was
declared." Since Missouri never seceded from the Union, and thus was not in rebellion when the Emancipation
Proclamation was issued in 1863, slavery continued in the state until the adoption of a new constitution on July 4,
1865. So Carver was most certainly born a slave, probably in the spring of 1865.4
Carver's mother Mary was purchased as a thirteen-year-old girl in 1855 when Moses Carver decided that the
need for help on his 240 acre farm trumped his antislavery views. The youngster knew neither of his parents
since his father was killed in an accident before his birth and his mother disappeared under somewhat mysterious
circumstances. When Carver was an infant his mother and he were kidnapped by one of the many bands of
bushwhackers roaming Missouri during the turbulent Civil War era. A neighbor of Moses Carver was hired to find
them, but succeeded only in recovering George, at the cost of one of Moses' finest horses. This meant that the
young George would be raised by Moses and Susan Carver on their farm in Newton County, Missouri. Carver
spent much of his boyhood assisting Susan with domestic chores, since his fragility apparently meant he could
not help Moses with the farm chores. As a boy, Carver learned how to cook, mend, do laundry, and embroider.
He also developed an interest in plants and helped Susan with the garden.
The youngster had a keen desire to learn, first by exploring the flora and fauna on Moses Carver's farm and by
devouring Webster's Elementary Spelling Book, which "I almost knew… by heart."5 At the age of eleven, Carver
left the farm and traveled eight miles to the county seat of Neosho to attend a school for blacks. For the first
time, Carver was in a predominantly African American environment. Previously, he had lived on the Carvers' farm
in relative isolation; he had grown used to solitude and had developed a love of nature. Moses and Susan Carver
had served as surrogate parents. But while he continued to return to the farm on weekends, he never lived
permanently with the Carvers again.
In Neosho Carver acquired a set of black "parents," Mariah and Andrew Watkins. He lived in the Watkins' modest
three-room house in exchange for helping with household tasks such as laundry. Mariah Watkins appears to have
had great influence on her 11-year-old charge. She was a midwife and nurse who had wide knowledge of
medicinal herbs, and she was deeply religious. Her influence and the rather eclectic introduction he had had to
religion at a little church a mile from the Carver farm imparted in young George a deeply felt but unorthodox and
nondenominational faith and a belief in divine revelation. He later testified to the number of revelations he had
received, recalling the first as a child when his wish for a pocketknife was answered in a dream in which he had a
vision of a knife sticking out a half-eaten watermelon. The next morning, the young Carver found his
pocketknife.6
Carver was eager to learn, but his first stab at formal school proved disappointing since the schoolmaster at the
Neosho knew little more than he did. Not satisfied with basic literacy, Carver decided to move west in the late
1870s, joining blacks disillusioned by the failure of Reconstruction in a vast migration to Kansas. For the next
decade or so, Carver shuttled among numerous Midwestern communities, attending school fitfully, trying his luck
at homesteading for a time, and surviving by using the domestic skills he had learned from Susan Carver and
Mariah Watkins.
Sometime in the late 1880s Carver's wanderings brought him to Winterset, Iowa, where he met the Milhollands,
a white couple who profoundly influenced his life and who he later credited with encouraging him to pursue
higher education. The Milhollands urged Carver to enroll in nearby Simpson College. Carver was hesitant; his one
previous attempt at higher education resulted in racial humiliation. He had applied to Highland College in Kansas
and had been accepted, sight unseen. When he showed up to register at the all-white college, an official said his
acceptance had been a mistake as the school had never admitted a black and had no intention to do so. Carver
was reluctant to be rejected again.
But the Milhollands persisted and Carver eventually entered Simpson College, a small Methodist school in
Indianola, Iowa, that admitted all qualified applicants, regardless of race or ethnicity. One black had attended the
school before Carver, and there were three Asians still on campus. The school's Methodist affiliation fostered a
deepening of Carver's faith and piety, and the school's open policy had a profound affect on his developing selfidentity: "They made me believe I was a real human being," he later wrote.7 While at Simpson, Carver studied
grammar, arithmetic, etymology, voice, and piano. But his main interest was in art, especially painting, in which
he had dabbled as a young man. His teacher, Etta Budd, was at first dubious of Carver's talents, and although
she changed her perception of him as an artist, she was skeptical about the chances of a black man earning a
living as an artist. When she learned of his interest in plants, Budd encouraged Carver to study botany and
pushed him to enroll at Iowa State, the agricultural college in Ames, where her father taught horticulture.
Budd's suggestion evidently posed a dilemma for Carver. He loved painting, but he shared her doubts about his
ability to succeed as an artist, and he wondered whether as a painter he could make a contribution to the welfare
of African Americans. Now in his mid-twenties, he had come to believe that he had divinely-granted talents that
should be used to improve the lot of blacks. This, he decided, he could do as a trained agriculturalist.
Besides, while he was giving up a career in art it was not as if he had decided to pursue something in which he
had no interest. He had long studied plants and he already had developed skills in raising, cross-fertilizing, and
grafting plants. He quickly made an impression on the faculty of Iowa State College, and his professors
encouraged him to stay on as a graduate student after his senior year. Working with L.H. Pammel, a noted
mycologist, Carver honed his talent at identifying and treating plant diseases.
Carver obtained his Master of Agriculture degree in 1896 and immediately received a number of offers. He was
asked to join the faculty of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College, a school for blacks in Mississippi. The
faculty at Iowa State wanted him to stay and teach. But it was an offer from Booker T. Washington that proved
most attractive. Washington had persuaded the trustees of Tuskegee Institute to establish an agricultural school.
Since Washington wanted the faculty to remain all black and since Carver was the only African American in the
country with graduate training in "scientific agriculture," he was the logical choice. Carver was at first hesitant to
go to Tuskegee, but Washington was persuasive and on April 12, 1896, Carver accepted, writing that "it has
always been the one great ideal of my life to be of the greatest good to the greatest number of 'my people'
possible and to this end I have been preparing myself these many years; feeling as I do that this line of
education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom to our people."8
1
Cited in Cited in Gary Kremer, ed., George Washington Carver: In His Own Words (Columbia, Missouri: The
University of Missouri Press, 1987), p. 3.
2
George Washington Carver, 1897 or thereabouts, George Washington Carver Papers, Tuskegee Institute
Archives, reel 1.
3
Carver, A Brief Sketch of My Life, ibid.
4
Linda McMurry, George Washington Carver: Scientist & Symbol (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 910.
5
Carver, A Brief Sketch, Carver Papers, reel 1.
6
McMurry, Carver, p. 18; Rackham Holt, George Washington Carver: An American Biography (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday and Company, 1946), p. 19.
7
Quoted in McMurry, Carver, p. 28.
8
Carver to Booker T. Washington, April 12, 1896, Booker T. Washington Papers (online version) vol. 4; p. 159.
The Tuskegee Institute
Tuskegee's origins were inauspicious. The school was founded on July 4, 1881, in a one room shanty near Butler
Chapel AME Zion Church with Booker T. Washington as the first teacher and a student body of thirty.1 The actual
credit for the school's origins goes to George Campbell,2 a former slave owner, and Lewis Adams, a former slave
who could read and write despite a lack of formal education and who appears to have been a tinsmith,
shoemaker, and harness-maker. Adams was approached by W.F. Foster, who was running for re-election to the
Alabama Senate and wanted the support of African Americans in Macon County. Foster asked Adams what he
wanted in exchange for delivering the black vote. Adams requested Foster's support for an educational
institution, and so the Alabama legislature passed a bill to establish a Negro Normal School in Tuskegee.
The initial legislation authorized $2,000 for teachers' salaries but nothing for land, buildings, or equipment. But
while the school may have been poor, it had a vision from the beginning. That vision grew out of Washington's
experience at Hampton Institute, a Virginia school established during Reconstruction, and it found expression in
three objectives. First, Tuskegee was to concentrate on training students to be teachers and educators. Second,
many Tuskegee students were taught craft and occupational skills geared to helping them find jobs in the trades
and agriculture. And finally, Washington wanted Tuskegee to be "a civilizing agent:" as such education took place
not only in the classroom but also in the dining hall and dormitories. Washington insisted on proper behavior and
absolute cleanliness on the "Tuskegee plantation." He kept careful watch over Tuskegee's buildings and grounds
as well as the dormitory rooms and table manners of faculty and staff.
Under Washington's adroit leadership the school quickly grew, moving the year after its founding to 100 acres of
nearby abandoned farmland, which became the nucleus of the present school. Washington won widespread
support for the school in both the North and the South. He traveled widely and spoke frequently, and convinced
many wealthy and prominent people to donate money. Among the schools early benefactors were Andrew
Carnegie, Collis Huntington, and John D. Rockefeller. Washington was a skilled fund-raiser, served as adviser to
presidents, and helped found schools throughout the South. But he was not without his critics. W.E.B. Du Bois,
for example, took exception to Tuskegee's emphasis on vocational training, arguing that it tended to keep blacks
in a subordinate role. Du Bois favored stressing traditional higher education.
Washington died in 1915 and the debate over educational philosophy diminished as Washington's successor,
Robert Russa Moton moved Tuskegee into a more traditional, degree-granting program with the establishment of
a College Department in 1927. In 1985 Tuskegee became a university and now has doctoral programs. Today,
the school has 3,000 students on a campus that includes 5,000 acres and more than seventy buildings.
1
Washington describes the school's founding and early years in his autobiographical writings, Up From Slavery
and The Story of My Life and Work, both of which can be found in the online version of the Booker T. Washington
Papers, vol.1.
2
Campbell provided funds frequently in the early years and was initial president of the Board of Trustees.
Washington, Up From Slavery, Washington Papers, vol. 1, p. 279.
Carver and Washington
As the most prominent African American of his day, Booker T. Washington had tremendous influence on southern
race relations from 1895 to his death in 1915. Much of this stemmed from Washington's speech at the Atlanta
Exposition of 1895 in which he advocated the "doctrine of accommodation."1 The so-called Atlanta Compromise
urged blacks to accommodate to the reality of white control and acquiesce in disfranchisement and social
segregation. In return, whites should encourage and reward black progress in economic and educational
development. Washington told blacks "to cast down their buckets" where they were and climb the ladder of
economic success through the old virtues of hard work and thrift. "The opportunity to earn a dollar," he said, "in
a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house." Washington
asserted that blacks should for the foreseeable future eschew demanding political and social rights, saying those
rights would follow economic independence. "No race," he stressed, "that has anything to contribute to the
markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized."
Washington's racial philosophy mirrored the times. The abolitionist spirit of the Civil War and Reconstruction had
resulted in blacks winning many civil and political rights. But even before the end of Reconstruction in 1877 those
rights were being eroded. Over the next twenty years the North and the federal government effectively
abandoned protection of the former slaves, leaving it to white southerners to work out racial relationships. The
gradual erosion of political and social rights accelerated in the 1890s during the political turmoil of the Populist
era, when attempts to forge an alliance of the dispossessed of both races foundered on the race-baiting appeals
of the politically entrenched. For the next half-century all whites, regardless of socio-economic status, tacitly
agreed to submerge class differences in the interest of racial separation.
George Washington Carver readily accepted Washington's racial philosophy and his program of interracial
cooperation in the economic sphere. Carver's own success demonstrated to him the importance of economic
development in raising the economic status of former slaves. And since the vast preponderance of southern
blacks remained tied to the land, Carver fervently believed that his training as an agricultural scientist had
prepared him for Tuskegee.
But in reality Carver was not prepared for Tuskegee. He had spent most of his life living and working around
whites; now he found himself in a community of blacks where his dark skin made him suspect among the
generally lighter-skinned faculty and students. He came from the North to teach "scientific agriculture" to
southern farmers who believed they already knew how to farm. Many on the faculty resented Carver's exorbitant
salary of $1,000 a year plus virtually all expenses for a man who did not have a family. At the time, the average
salary for a Tuskegee faculty member was less than $400 a year. Some resented Carver's demand, which was
met, to have two dormitory rooms, one for him and one for his plant specimens when other unmarried faculty
lived two to a room.
Carver expected that as director of the newly created Agricultural Experimental Station he would devote most of
his time to research. Washington was not hostile to research, but he also expected Carver to manage the school's
two farms, teach a full regimen of classes, serve on numerous committees (a chore Carver particularly disliked),
and sit on the institute's executive council as well as insure that the schools water closets and other sanitary
facilities functioned properly. Above all, Washington and Carver were very different men who were almost fated
to clash. Washington was a pragmatist always in a hurry to get things done; Carver was a dreamer who only
wanted freedom to tinker in his laboratory, experiment with plants or, if the spirit moved him, pick up a brush
and paint. In addition, the well-organized Washington resented the disorganized, administratively sloppy, and
shabbily dressed Carver.
To make matters worse, Carver had a running feud with George Bridgeforth, a subordinate who was not reticent
in campaigning for Carver's position. Bridgeforth openly criticized Carver to Washington and the latter appeared
to often take Bridgeforth's side and repeated his criticisms to Carver, who found the dispute distasteful. But
Carver often refused to accept Washington's suggestions, which the principal admitted were just "a polite way of
giving orders."2 The dispute ran on for years, and Washington careened from trying to satisfy Carver to issuing
him ultimatums.
Part of the problem stemmed from Carver's insistence on having a laboratory for his exclusive use and to be
relieved of his teaching duties. Washington's response to this was clear: "We are all here," he said, "to help the
students, to instruct them, and there is no justification for the presence of any teacher here except as that
teacher is to serve the students."3 Washington tried to placate Carver because he genuinely recognized Carver's
"great ability in original research," but he refused to allow the scientist to completely stop teaching.4
Washington's successor, Robert Russa Moton, who took over in 1915, was more accommodating, relieving Carver
of all teaching except summer school.
1
For the text of Washington's Atlanta Compromise speech, see Booker T. Washington Papers (online version) vol.
3, pp. 583-87.
2
Linda McMurry, George Washington Carver: Scientist & Symbol (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 69.
This discussion of the relationship between Carver and Washington leans heavily on McMurry's analysis.
3
Washington to Carver, February 26, 1911, Washington Papers, vol. 10, p. 595.
4
Ibid., p. 594.
Agricultural Chemist
George Washington Carver believed he had a God-given mission to use his training as an agricultural chemist to
help improve the lot of poor black and white Southern farmers. He did this by teaching farmers about fertilization
and crop rotation and by developing hundreds of new products from common agricultural products. In addition to
his work as a scientist, Carver served the cause of science, in the words of his chief biographer, "magnificently as
an interpreter and humanizer, providing an essential link between researchers and laymen and enabling many to
reap the benefits of others' work by helping them to apply it to their own circumstances."1
Late in Carver's life he became a devotee of the chemurgy ("chem" from chemistry; urgy, Greek for work)
movement. The term was used to describe scientists, agriculturalists, and industrialists who were determined to
put chemistry to work to find nonfood uses for agricultural surpluses. One of the prime backers of chemurgy was
Henry Ford, who Carver variously addressed in letters as "My beloved friend" and "The greatest of all my
inspiring friends."2 Ford visited Tuskegee in 1938, and Carver was Ford's guest in 1940 at the automaker's
Georgia estate.
But Carver did not need the imprimatur of Henry Ford or the formal title of a movement to explain his role as a
scientist, for in truth Carver dedicated his entire scientific work to the goals later advocated by the chemurgy
movement. Carver's laboratory at Tuskegee, almost from the beginning of his tenure at the Institute, developed
hundreds of new uses for agricultural products. The need for this resulted in part from Carver's initial success in
increasing agricultural productivity on the cotton-depleted, tired, old soils of the South. On the ten-acre
experimental station at Tuskegee Carver was able, by using good cultivation practices and rotating soil-enriching
plants like cowpeas and beans, to increase dramatically soil productivity.
For example, on a one-half acre plot Carver increased the yield of sweet potatoes in a few years from 40 bushels
to 266 bushels. He dramatically showed that when he took land on which cotton had been planted, a crop which
robs soil of nutrients, and planted nitrogen-fixing legumes, like peas and beans, he was able to increase yields
significantly when the land reverted to cotton a few years later. Carver accomplished this without the use of
commercial fertilizers, an expense beyond the reach of most poor Southern farmers, many of whom were
sharecroppers or tenant farmers. Carver was aware that "every operation" he performed had to be within the
reach of a "poor tenant farmer with a one-horse equipment."3
Carver's successes with planting legumes of course led to his encouraging Southern farmers to turn to these
crops. This became even more urgent with the devastation in the early 20th century of the cotton crop due to the
boll weevil. But if Southern farmers were to be convinced to grow crops other than cotton (or other traditional
staples such as tobacco and rice), there had to be a market for peas, sweet potatoes, soybeans, and the like.
This need pushed Carver into the laboratory to work on finding alternative uses for these products. From sweet
potatoes, for example, came a raft of new products: flours, starches, sugar, a faux coconut, vinegar, synthetic
ginger, chocolate and such non-foods as stains, dyes, paints, writing ink, etc.
But it was the lowly peanut which made Carver famous. The peanut attracted his attention because it is easy to
cultivate, it enriches the soil, and it is a ready source of protein, an especially important consideration since poor
black farmers could not afford meat. From the peanut Carver developed a host of new products: most notably
milk, but also butter, meal, Worcestershire sauce, various punches, cooking oils, salad oil, milk and medicines as
well as cosmetics such as hand lotions, face creams, and powder. All together, he discovered more than 300
food, industrial, and commercial products from the peanut. Carver's research on foodstuffs derived not only from
his belief that he had to find new uses for agricultural products to encourage farmers to grow them, but also
because he saw many of these new products as nutritious additions to the diet of poor southerners. Similarly, he
experimented with paints that could be made from Alabama clay since he knew that poor farmers could not
afford commercial applications.
But inventing new products and demonstrating how to increase yields were only part of Carver's
accomplishments. Intrinsic to his image of himself as a scientist - and as someone destined to assist
impoverished blacks to improve their lot - was his role as a disseminator and an interpreter of scientific
information. This was a role Carver assumed early on in his tenure at Tuskegee. One example of this was the
Jessup wagon which grew out of the need to reach rural dwellers. Teaching modern farming practices and
demonstrating new seeds to black belt farmers proved difficult, despite the best efforts of the Agricultural
Extension Station and various conferences, fairs, and the like sponsored by Tuskegee.
Out of this frustration came the idea that if farmers would not or could not come to a school, then the school
should go to them. Already, agriculturalists in Europe were experimenting with movable schools. In 1904 Iowa
State organized "Seed Corn Gospel Trains," which carried lecturers and demonstration materials to farmers
gathered at railroad stations. That same year Washington suggested that Carver outfit a wagon as a "traveling
agricultural school."4 Carver called the idea "most excellent" and funding to equip and operate such a wagon was
obtained from New York banker and philanthropist Morris K. Jessup, hence the name of the wagon, and from the
John F. Slater Fund.
Tuskegee's traveling school opened for business on May 24, 1906. Carver never operated the wagon, but he
drafted plans for it, selected the equipment, drew charts demonstrating farm operations, and suggested lectures
on self-sufficient farming, fertilization, and the best crops to grow in various soils. The wagon was so successful
that within a few months it was made part of the outreach program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture with
Thomas Campbell, who had been a Tuskegee student, as operator under Carver's tutelage. The Jessup wagon
greatly widened Tuskegee's reach, as Campbell's travels took him farther and farther away from the Institute.
Rather than lecture farmers about proper agricultural techniques, Campbell would select a typical farm in a
particular region, show the owner proper procedures for increasing yields, and guarantee the owner against
losses. The success of these "cooperators" in increasing production then spurred their neighbors to adopt
scientific farming methods.
Carver reached an even wider audience through the bulletins he issued as director of the Agricultural Experiment
Station at Tuskegee. Publishing bulletins was one of the major functions of experimental stations; the bulletins
generally reported the findings of station experiments and were usually aimed at agricultural researchers, not
farmers. Carver intended his bulletins to bridge that gap; as such, he reported on the results of his experiments,
but he also wanted the publications to serve as manuals for farmers. Initially, Carver set a goal of issuing four
bulletins a year. He averaged less than half of that, and the number diminished over time, mostly because
Carver's experimental station was a one-man operation, and that one man had many other responsibilities. In
addition, the station was continually starved for funding.
Washington constantly pressed Carver to issue more bulletins, but in truth the scientist was laboring against
impossible odds.5 He did all the research himself and prepared the manuscripts, including writing, editing, and
typing them. He had no stenographer at the beginning and never had a printing press. So, Carver had to have his
bulletins printed at the school's printing office, which frequently had no money. Since most of the bulletins were
provided free of charge, Carver often had to beg for money to pay production costs.
Still, between 1898 and 1943, the year of his death, Carver issued forty-four bulletins, ranging from Experiments
with Sweet Potatoes to How to Build up Worn Out Soils to Fertilizer Experiments in Cotton. Some were decidedly
practical: How to Cook Peas and Three Delicious Meals Every Day for the Farmer are examples. Virtually all of the
bulletins exhibited what Carver called his "threefold approach:" to supply simple cultivation information for
farmers, a little science for teachers, and some recipes for housewives. Carver believed this approach spurred
demand; in fact, demand for the bulletins was great, quickly exhausting the supply of two to five thousand copies
that were usually printed. Success bred further problems since getting money for reprints was even harder than
for the first printing.
But the widest audience Carver reached came in the forum that cemented his fame as "The Peanut Man:" his
appearance in 1921 before the House Ways and Means Committee as an expert witness on behalf of the peanut
industry which was seeking tariff protection. Carver's testimony did not begin well. He showed up in his usual
manner: clean but rather shabbily dressed. Then he fumbled around as he laid out samples of peanut products on
the table. He quickly used up his allotted ten minutes, but his time was repeatedly extended, as he showed and
described the vast number of items that could be made from peanuts. He so captivated committee members that
he received a standing ovation. More importantly, he convinced the committee that peanuts should be protected,
helping to secure a high protective tariff for them. As his biographer wrote, "In less than an hour Carver had won
a tariff for the peanut industry and national fame for himself."6
Carver was so enamored with the potential powers of the peanut that he became convinced the legume had
miraculous curative powers. Carver had been introduced to the belief that natural products could cure a variety of
diseases as a child while living with Mariah Watkins in Neosho, Missouri. Linked to his belief in the wonders of
natural products and herbal remedies was his conviction that massages were beneficial, a belief which stemmed
from his days as masseur to the Iowa State football team.
At Tuskegee Carver treated his friends to massages with peanut oil. By the 1930s he became convinced peanut
oil could ameliorate the devastating paralysis that accompanied polio. He was certain that peanut oil applied
during a massage not only saturated the skin and flesh but actually entered the blood stream and helped restore
life to limbs withered by the effects of polio. In 1933 the Associated Press carried a story about Carver's alleged
successes with peanut oil massages and, for a time, Tuskegee began to look like Lourdes as paralyzed pilgrims
flocked to the Alabama school.
It is not clear just how effective Carver's massages were in treating polio. It is true that many of those treated
testified that he had helped them regain at least some use of paralyzed limbs. Certainly, his claims about peanut
oil massages do suggest a bit of the charlatan, but it should be pointed out that he never took payment for his
treatments and that polio was a crippling disease that each summer seemed to affect more and more people. The
fear of polio did not end until the development of an effective vaccine in the 1950s.
1
Linda McMurry, George Washington Carver: Scientist & Symbol (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 306.
2
Gary Kremer, ed., George Washington Carver: In His Own Words (Columbia, Missouri: The University of
Missouri Press, 1987), pp. 159, 161.
3
George Washington Carver, How to Build Up Worn Out Soils, Tuskegee Experiment Station, Bulletin Six
(Tuskegee, 1905), p. 4.
4
McMurry, Carver, pp. 125-27.
5
Ibid, p.78. Washington worried that the Tuskegee Agricultural Station would be unfavorably compared with
other stations, particularly the one at Auburn University. The station at Auburn was more productive, but the
comparison was not fair. By 1913 the Auburn station had thirteen employees and the Alabama State Legislature,
which controlled the purse strings of the stations, awarded the lion's share of funds to Auburn. Ibid. Note that the
funds to operate the Agricultural Stations came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but the USDA gave the
money in a block to state legislatures which in turn allocated funds to stations within a state. Given the racial
politics of the early 20th century, it was no surprise that most of the money went to Auburn University, not the
Tuskegee Institute.
6
McMurry, Carver, p. 174.
Teacher and mentor
Booker T. Washington, who was frequently at odds with Carver, never wavered in his belief that Carver's "great
forte is in teaching and lecturing. There are few people anywhere who have greater ability to inspire and instruct
as a teacher..."1 Carver was not a great speaker. He had in fact a rather high-pitched voice. But he was a
showman who frequently used dramatic examples and humor to make his points. Most importantly, his success
as a teacher stemmed from his obvious enthusiasm for his subject, which was an appreciation of the wonders of
nature. It did not matter whether the formal topic was chemistry, botany, or agriculture, for all of these subjects
meant studying how to use nature for the benefit of man. Learning was the process of a student moving from
what he already knew to the "nearest related unknown" while education was the process of "understanding
relationships."2
Although Carver gave up the formal classroom after 1915, he did not ignore Tuskegee's students. Carver's
contacts with students, even in the early years, were never limited to the classroom. He took seriously
Tuskegee's goal of educating the total person, and he understood that since many of the first students were just
a generation or two removed from slavery, they needed to be taught more than chemistry or agriculture: they
needed instruction in how to survive in a competitive as well as hostile world.
Carver emphasized the teacher's responsibility to be concerned with his students both in and out of the
classroom. Since he lived in a dormitory, he was accessible to all students, regardless of their field of study. Many
students, particularly those who suffered most from poverty and discrimination, flocked to him; they became "his
boys." He recognized that white racism often proved an impenetrable obstacle to the success of his students, but
he was an optimist and a dreamer and he tried to instill in them his abiding faith in a just universe. This was
partly why he taught a Sunday evening Bible class, which was well-attended during the thirty years of Carver's
involvement. The class was a labor of love for Carver, an intensely religious man who viewed the Creator as good
and saw evil as the result of man's inability to grasp the good. These religious beliefs informed Carver's outlook
on white racism.
"Carver's boys" initially were drawn from the Tuskegee student body. But over the years, as his fame and
interests widened, Carver came into contact with young men from all over the South, some of whom were white
and all of whom frequently sought his advice. Many of these contacts came through speeches Carver gave to the
Atlanta-based Commission in Interracial Cooperation and the Young Men's Christian Association. Both groups
were committed to furthering interracial harmony, and in his speeches Carver would scan the audience for faces
that seemed interested in what he was saying. It was in this way that Carver met Jim Hardwick, a descendant of
slave owners. Hardwick had been captain of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute football team and was now looking
for a way to be of Christian service. Hardwick became one of Carver's boys and the two had a long
correspondence, with many of the letters from Carver addressed to "My Beloved Boy."
Late in his life, Carver wrote a letter to Dana Johnson, another of Carver's protégés, as was his brother Cecil, in
which he tried to express how much these young men meant to him. "Not a day passes," Carver stated, "that I
do not think of my boys and often wonder just what they are doing." He continued, "It is such an inspiration to
me to watch the progress that you and your brother have, and are yet, making, and the future that will doubtless
be yours as young aspiring American citizens who must figure into the building up of this great American
commonwealth..."3 For Carver, who never married and had no children, the friendship, love, and dependence of
these young men meant as much to him as his advice meant to them.
1
Washington to Carver, February 26, 1911, Booker T. Washington Papers (online version), vol. 10, p. 594.
2
Linda McMurry, George Washington Carver: Scientist & Symbol (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 97
3
Carver to Dana Johnson, February 14, 1942, in Gary Kremer, ed., George Washington Carver: In His Own
Words (Columbia, Missouri: The University of Missouri Press, 1987), p. 191.
Carver as symbol
George Washington Carver: inventor, scientist, agriculturalist, teacher, mentor, and above all symbol. Carver was
all of the above at various times; as such, he often eludes easy categorization. Certainly, he was a scientist, but
not one who always used the most rigorous methods. He was very successful as a scientist, inventor, and
agriculturalist, but he did not measure success by the usual methods. He said: "It is not the style of clothes one
wears, neither the kind of automobiles one drives, nor the amount of money one has in the bank that counts.
These mean nothing. It is simple service that measures success."1 Measured by this standard, Carver was indeed
a success.
Carver's ability to develop new products, especially from the peanut, cemented his fame, and that fame spread
after his House testimony and his quasi-adoption as the peanut industry's spokesman. In the 1920s a number of
newspapers in the South touted his accomplishments and saw him as an example of the New South, a movement
that preached a degree of interracial harmony based on economic opportunity for blacks. Carver's multifaceted
role as an example of what blacks could achieve by dint of hard work as well as the use of his success by others
to promote racial harmony must be remembered in any assessment of him.
Carver's stature as a symbol had become fixed by his later years. Various groups adopted him as an emblem for
whatever cause they represented. It is no wonder that the country was quick to make his birthplace in Diamond
Grove, Missouri, a national monument, the first such honor bestowed on a black.
1
Quoted in Gary Kremer, ed., George Washington Carver: In His Own Words (Columbia, Missouri: The University
of Missouri Press, 1987), p. 17.