We’ve still got four days left in the month of February. February, as most US readers will know, has been officially designated AfricanAmerican History Month. Leaving aside the debate on whether or not 28 to 29 days is really enough to honor the contributions of one eighth of the American population, I’m going to use this opportunity to blather on about one of my favorite scientists of all time - George Washington Carver.
For most of us, the name probably provokes an immediate association with peanuts, and justifiably so. One Carver publication was entitled “How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption”. Carver has even been called the inventor of peanut butter. None of this work was born out of some irrational devotion to the peanut. Carver devoted much of his life to improving the lot of small farmers in the southeastern United States. Centuries of cotton monoculture had left behind a legacy of sharecropping, exhausted soils and economic vulnerability. Carver promoted the cultivation of several legume crops, including peanuts, as a solution to the problem. Legumes are nitrogen fixers - switching a field from cotton to peanut production returns nutrients to depleted soils. While still a labor-intensive crop, every part of the peanut plant can be either used by the farmer or sold at market. Peanuts were not susceptible to the diseases and pests affecting cotton, including the devastating boll weevil.
But that’s just scratching the surface. Carver was a self-made scientist. Born into slavery in Missouri, he received some basic education from his former owner. For everything else, Carver was on his own. As a boy, he traveled to Kansas to complete his education. As Carver had to work to support himself, he was in his twenties before he finished high school. He was accepted to college in Kansas, but rejected for being black, and wound up attending college in Iowa. By the time he received a Masters from Iowa State University, he had become a well-respected botanist. Carver was recruited to run the Agriculture Department at the Tuskegee Institute.
The Tuskegee Institute ran one of the best known land-grant programs then open to African-American students (for the record, Tuskegee University still offers excellent instruction, to students of all colors). At Tuskegee, Carver was the embodiment of the land grant ideal. He applied the latest scientific techniques to the problems of small farmers. Over his career, Carver authored 44 technical bulletins on subjects ranging from the finer points of sweet potato farming to suggested programs of gardening and nature education for rural schools. In order to better reach the small farmers of the South, Carver designed a portable demonstration laboratory and took it on the road. Carver sought to encourage dialogue between farmers and agricultural scientists, by soliciting soil and water samples from farmers, and offering classes to farmers - a forerunner of the soil testing services and practical classes offered to today’s farmers through the Cooperative Extension program.
Carver was more than a practical farmer, however. Over his career he accumulated a slew of awards, including being one of the few Americans named to the British Royal Academy of Sciences. Carver became a household name in the United States after testifying before Congress as an expert on peanut production. After his testimony, he became a widely sought-after lecturer throughout the country. At a time of de jure segregation in the South, de facto segregation in the North, and a general attitude throughout the United States that African-Americans were inherently stupid, George Washington Carver had become an acknowledged expert. As such, he helped to legitimize the technical work of the Tuskegee Institute, attracting funding and support from prominent Americans. Not only did Carver achieve his immediate goal of improving the lot of the poor farmer, but he whittled away at existing stereotypes, and helped pave the way for the generations of African-American scientists and engineers who came after him.
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