George Washington Carver, who was born a slave in 1861, became one of America's greatest scientists in the field of agriculture. His discoveries changed farming in the South of the United States. A quiet and kind man, he could have become rich from his discoveries but preferred "to be of the greatest good to the greatest number of my people."
George's mother was a slave, but soon after he was born, he and his brother lost their mother and became orphans. They were raised by Moses and Susan Carver, who were their owners. Slaves took the names of their owners, so George Washington's last name was Carver, too. In 1865, there were no longer slaves in the United States, but George and his brother continued to live with the Carvers. The Carvers gave him as much of an education as they could. At age 12, George left the Carvers to start life on his own..
For the next 12 years, he worked whenever he could and went to school whenever he could. He managed to finish high school and won a scholarship to go to Highland University. However, when he appeared at the university, they refused to admit him because he was black. This did not stop Carver. He continued to work and save money. Eventually, he went to Simpson College in 1890 to study painting and paid for his school by ironing clothes for other students. Soon, he realized he could not support himself a an artist and decided to study agriculture instead.
In 1891, he was accepted at Iowa Agricultural College. He was the only black student at the college, and as usual he supported himself by doing small jobs. He amazed everyone with his special work with plants. After he graduated, the college asked him to stay on as an instructor because his work with plants and chemistry was so outstanding. So Carver stayed on and taught, but he continued his research with plants while he was teaching.
One day he received a letter from Booker T. Washington, who was the most respected black educator in the country. Washington asked him to work at the Tuskegee Institute, a black agricultural school in Alabama. Tuskegee was a poor black school that could not give Carver a laboratory or a high salary, but Carver decided to go there.
In 1896, Carver started to teach and do research with plants at the Tuskegee Institute. He taught classes on agriculture, and through his experiments he found new ways to help the poor, struggling farmers of the south. Here, farmers had been growing cotton, which wore out the soil. He showed farmers how to plant different crops like peanuts to make the soil richer. After a while, farmers did what he said and were growing more and more peanuts. They were now making money from peanuts than from cotton.
Carver developed many uses for the peanut. In fact, he found more than 300 uses for the peanut, and he became known as the "peanut man." He received many prizes and awards for his work. He gave lectures about the uses of peanuts all over the United States and even spoke to Congress about peanuts in 1921. Meanwhile, Carver began to experiment with the sweet potato and discovered more than 100 products that could be made from it, including glue for postage stamps.
By the 1930s, Carver had become famous all over the country and the world. He visited the Prince of Sweden and the British Prince of Wales. Thomas Edison asked Carver to work for him at a salary of more than $100,000 a year. The car manufacturer Henry Ford also made him a generous offer. But Carver was not interested in money; he stayed on at the Tuskegee Institute with a monthly salary of $125.
In 1940, he gave all his life savings of $33,000 to the George Washington Carcver Foundation to provide opportunities for African Americans to study in his field, because for Carver, "Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom..." Carver died in 1943.