George Washington Carver was born in Missouri. The actual date of his birth is not known. It is somewhere between 1861 and 1864. He was born a
slave and became a
free man in 1865 at the end of the Civil War. He loved learning but was not allowed to go to school close by. At that time, the black children and white children did not go to the same schools. Schools were
segregated.
The school that he could go to was far from his house. He left his family and went away to school. He was a good student. George finished high school. He wanted to go on to
college. Again, he had a
problem with not being
able to go to school because of his
race.
George did go to
college. He had to work and
borrow money to
attend. He took classes in art and music. One of his teachers told him that he needed to
study about plants, so he went into the field of
botany. He went to a
college for
agriculture. Mr. Washington
graduated and taught others. He continued his studies in
botany and became well known.
Later he taught at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama for 47 years.He was an important
research scientist. He found 100 new ways to use peanuts, too! George is known for his work with peanuts in experiments on using them in dyes, plastics, paint, and even make-up.
He was
proud of his accomplishments in teaching farmers better ways to use the
soil, plant and
cultivate their farms. Most southern farmers worked
soil that had been
depleted of minerals needed for
healthy plant growth. The farmers had planted the same thing in their fields year after year and the
soil was no longer good for producing money making crops. He and his fellow scientists showed them
crop rotation to help
replenish the
soil.
After his death in 1943, George Washington Carver had a
national monument named after him, a ship, a
submarine, was named to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans and admitted to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1990. He is known world-wide for his work and accomplishments.
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