The Life and Legacy of George Washington Carver

By Daniel Ein Alshaeba, 2025

Published 2/28/2024

George Washington Carver was a highly accomplished African-American scientist and inventor, responsible for integrating peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans into the American lifestyle while also striving to integrate African-Americans into American society. 

Carver was born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, with his mother having been enslaved nine years before his birth. (His exact date of birth is unknown, though he was likely born in 1864.) Shortly after his birth, however, Carver was separated from his mother and sister, who were kidnapped by slave raiders and sold in Kentucky. The following year, Carver was freed from slavery after the end of the Civil War. Nevertheless, orphaned and frail, George Washington Carver had to be raised by his former masters, Moses and Susan Carver. Carver refused to let his situation stifle his passion for learning, though, and he developed a deep interest in botany from an early age. 

Carver, due to the lack of schooling opportunities available to African-American children at the time, would leave Moses Carver’s farm at the age of eleven to pursue education in an all-Black school located in Neosho, the next town over. Over the next several years, he would move to various other schools before finally graduating from Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas, in 1880. After completing high school, he applied to Highland College but was rejected due to his race. This temporary setback did not extinguish his passion for science, however; Carver proceeded to conduct various biological experiments and even began a geological collection. Then, in 1890, he enrolled in Simpson College in Iowa, where he began to pursue the arts. In Carver’s art classes, his professor took note of Carver’s scientific aptitude and encouraged him to pursue botany at the Iowa State Agricultural College. Four years later, Carver graduated from Iowa, becoming the first African-American man to earn a bachelor of science degree. Furthermore, his impressive soybean research prompted professors to ask him to stay for graduate school. In 1896, Carver graduated with a Master of Agriculture degree. 

Shortly after graduating, Carver received an offer from Booker T. Washington, a leader in the African-American community and the founder of the Tuskegee Institute, a technical school specifically designed to provide education to African-Americans. As part of this offer, the institute would establish an agricultural school with Carver at its head. Carver accepted the offer, but he wanted to devote the majority of his time to teaching, rather than the less-engaging tasks associated with his position, including farm management and council work. This caused tension between Carver and Washington throughout his time at the Tuskegee Institute. To add, agricultural training was initially unpopular at the institute; students had enrolled in the institute to escape farm work, not to do more of it. Through Carver’s leadership, however, the department was able to develop a curriculum and areas of research that gained national recognition. 

Some of Carter’s most significant innovations stemmed from a historic problem in Southern agriculture. Carver noticed that the South’s consistent and exclusive growth of cotton drained nutrients from the soil, and he discovered that growing nitrogen-fixing plants, such as peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans, could resolve this issue. These crops, however, had little demand at the time, prompting Carver to investigate their potential uses. Over the course of his life, Carver would find over 300 uses for peanuts and 118 uses for sweet potatoes in milk, oils, paints, plastics, soaps, and various other products. (Contrary to popular belief, peanut butter was not among Carver’s inventions.) In light of this, he was asked to testify in front of the House of Representatives on behalf of the peanut industry, and he succeeded in getting a protective tariff for peanuts passed, earning the nickname “The Peanut Man.” 

In the final decades of his life, Carver devoted himself to promoting racial equity, traveling to many parts of the South, including Southern white colleges, and touring on behalf of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. On January 5, 1943, disaster struck as Carver, at 78 years old, passed away after falling down the stairs of his home. He was buried alongside Booker T. Washington at the Tuskegee Institute. Shortly after, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a bill creating the George Washington Carver National Monument in Carver’s hometown of Diamond, Missouri. 

Today, George Washington Carver is honored as a pioneer in both scientific discovery and racial equality. His efforts were essential in promoting the rights, freedoms, and successes of African-Americans in the United States. At the same time, he saved Southern agriculture and shaped modern products by making use of previously disregarded foods. Carver’s life continues to serve as a reminder that everyone is capable of achieving great things, regardless of the color of their skin.