Why is washington carver famous

In the post—Civil War South one man made it his mission to use agricultural chemistry and scientific methodology to improve the lives of impoverished farmers. George Washington Carver ca. His exact birth date and year are unknown, and reported dates range between and The Carvers raised George and gave him their surname. Early on he developed a keen interest in plants, collecting specimens in the woods on the farm.

At age 11, Carver left home to pursue an education in the nearby town of Neosho. He was taken in by an African American couple, Mariah and Andrew Watkins, for whom he did odd jobs while attending school for the first time. Disappointed in the school in Neosho, Carver eventually left for Kansas, where for several years he supported himself through a variety of occupations and added to his education in a piecemeal fashion.

He eventually earned a high school diploma in his twenties, but he soon found that opportunities to attend college for young black men in Kansas were nonexistent. So in the late s Carver relocated again, this time to Iowa, where he met the Milhollands, a white couple who encouraged him to enroll in college. Carver briefly attended Simpson College in Indianola, studying music and art.

A frail, sickly child, Carver was unable to work in the fields, so he did household chores and gardening. He was left with many free hours to wander the woods — collecting rocks and flowers, and beginning a lifelong love affair with nature. Carver left Diamond Grove at age 12 to pursue an education, a quest that led him to Iowa. In , he began to study music and art at Simpson College. Painting enabled him to combine his two loves — art and nature.

Yet it was his horticultural talents that took him in another direction in In , he received a request from Booker T. Upon arriving, he found that the school was short on funds so Dr. Carver had to equip his own lab. He and his students would search trash heaps for items to use. This resourcefulness proved that Dr. Carver was well ahead of his time. These scavenger hunts with his students were an early example of recycling and the conservation of natural resources.

Thus began an adventure in Alabama that would span five decades. Growing peanuts contributed to the sustainability of farms , in part because peanuts naturally add beneficial nitrogen to the soil. Everything looked hungry: the land, the cotton, the cattle, and the people. What Carver understood was that cotton, while lucrative, did nothing to replenish the soil.

Carver later would describe eroded gullies on the Tuskeegee campus that were deep enough for a person to stand inside. What he failed to understand, however, were the political and social forces he would be up against. In turn-of-the-century Alabama, black farmers lived a precarious existence, ever-threatened by unevenly enforced laws that disproportionately harmed blacks. While the farmer remained in jail, whites put up his farm for sale.

Still, Carver got to work. He worked tirelessly—the Carver Monument says from 4 a. That, too, was tough: Financially lucrative cotton, Hersey says, was seen as the only crop that could get tenants out of debt. Carver encouraged farmers to grow, or at the very least forage, their own vegetables and proteins so they would spend less money on food. Later, he developed and implemented the Jesup Agricultural Wagon, a school-on-wheels that brought agricultural equipment and demonstration materials to rural farmers unable to travel.

The wagon reached 2, people a month in its first summer of operations, in Carver encouraged farmers to look to the land for what they needed, rather than going into debt buying fertilizer and paint, and soap, and other necessities—and food.