Carver, George Washington, 1864?–1943, American agricultural chemist, b. Diamond, Mo., grad. Iowa State College (now Iowa State Univ.; B.S., 1894; M.A. 1896). Born a slave, he later, as a free man, earned his college degree. In 1896 he joined the staff of Tuskegee Institute as director of the department of agricultural research, retaining that post the rest of his life. His work won him international repute. Carver's efforts to improve the economy of the South (he dedicated himself especially to bettering the position of African Americans) included the teaching of soil improvement and of diversification of crops. He discovered hundreds of uses for the peanut, the sweet potato, and the soybean and thus stimulated the culture of these crops. He devised many products from cotton waste and extracted blue, purple, and red pigments from local clay. From 1935 he was a collaborator of the Bureau of Plant Industry. Carver contributed his life savings to a foundation for research at Tuskegee. In 1953 his birthplace was made a national monument.

Bibliography

See biographies by R. Holt (rev. ed. 1966) and L. Elliott (1966).

Carver, George Washington

George Washington Carver

(credit: Courtesy of the Tuskegee Institute, Alabama; photograph, P.H. Polk)

(born 1861?, near Diamond Grove, Mo., U.S.—died Jan. 5, 1943, Tuskegee, Ala.) U.S. agricultural chemist and agronomist. Born a slave, Carver lived until age 10 or 12 on his former owner's plantation, then left and worked at a variety of menial jobs. He did not obtain a high school education until his late twenties; he then obtained bachelor's and master's degrees from Iowa State Agricultural College. In 1896 he joined Booker T. Washington at the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama, where he became director of agricultural research. He was soon promoting the planting of peanuts and soybeans, legumes that he knew would help restore the fertility of soil depleted by cotton cropping. To make them profitable, he worked intensively with the sweet potato and the peanut (then not even recognized as a crop), ultimately developing 118 derivative products from sweet potatoes and 300 from peanuts. His efforts helped liberate the South from its untenable cotton dependency; by 1940 the peanut was the South's second largest cash crop. During World War II he devised 500 dyes to replace those no longer available from Europe. Despite international acclaim and extraordinary job offers, he remained at Tuskegee throughout his life, donating his life's savings in 1940 to establish the Carver Research Foundation at Tuskegee.

Carver, George Washington (c. 1861–1943) agricultural chemist, educator, botanist; born near Diamond Grove, Mo. Born to slave parents, he began his education at age 14 and earned a B.S. and M.S. in agriculture (1894, 1896) from Iowa State College. He directed the agricultural research department at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama (1896–1943), teaching and pioneering an extension program of "movable schools" to train black farmers in agriculture and home economics. Aiming to revitalize and conserve depleted soil, Carver influenced the southern shift from single-crop to diversified agriculture by developing hundreds of products made from peanuts, sweet potatoes, and other crops, many of them commercially viable. He developed a hybrid cotton and was a noted collector of fungi. Working with severely limited resources outside the white scientific establishment, Carver published little more than his 44 Tuskegee Experiment Station bulletins (1898–1942) and, wishing his work to be widely available, obtained only three patents; nevertheless he became a researcher of international stature. He chose not to challenge the system of segregation that existed during his lifetime, but he became one of the chief models of what African-Americans could accomplish.