George W. Carver: “African American Leonardo”
George W. Carver: “African American Leonardo”
[Originally published Feb. 2022]
In the year 1864, on a 240 acre farm near Diamond Grove, Missouri, George was born to his mother Mary and father Giles. He had a sister and a younger brother too, and they were all enslaved by Moses and Susan Carver. When George was an infant, his father died. He and his mother were then kidnapped by rustlers and resold in a neighboring state. Mary was never seen again, but George, small and frail, was found. In exchange for his finest horse, Moses paid for the baby’s return and brought him home.
Moses and Susan took the youngest boys into their home and cared for them as if they were their own children. George and his brother were welcome at the church, where he listened to the sermons of traveling Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian preachers, acquiring a nondenominational faith. He memorized and recited Bible verses. He sang hymns and learned to play the church piano. “God just came into my heart one afternoon” when he was eight or nine years old, he wrote years later, “while I was alone in the loft of our big barn, shelling corn to carry to the mill to be ground into meal.” His faith would under-gird and provide the reason for his existence from this moment forward.
In those days, George was not allowed to attend public school because of the color of his skin, so Susan taught George to read and write and, when the bright scholar turned thirteen, the Carvers sent him to a school, eight miles away. There in Neosho he boarded with a devout black couple, Andrew and Mariah Watkins, who took him to the African Methodist Episcopal Church. They gave him a Bible for Christmas, which he carried with him and read every day for the rest of his life.
George was a brilliant lad, excelling in all of his subjects easily. He attended colleges, art, and music schools in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Alabama. He earned bachelor and master degrees, painted masterfully, and was an accomplished musician. He loved the out of doors, marveled at all that God had made, and was convinced that science was essential for helping humans to explain the awesomeness of Creator-God. George in time became one of the most influential scientists the world has ever seen.
Biographer-scientist John Ferrell said of him, “Far from resembling an environmentalist as that term is currently understood, Carver was a potentially puzzling combination of nature mystic, saint, scientist, and business booster. He certainly stood in awe of creation as he found it, but his wonder was combined with a sense that God had placed in nature vast potential for human betterment. He was a St. Francis armed with test tubes, seeking, through scientific means, creation’s undiscovered fruits to enhance the well-being of all people.”
When Booker T. Washington, founder and president of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama, invited George to join the faculty to teach, George said he would come, pledging “to cooperate with you in doing all I can through Christ who strengtheneth me to better the conditions of our people.” George's job at Tuskegee was to teach classes in science, agriculture, and art, and to create and run a laboratory. He began with enthusiasm. Well before sunrise he was out walking in the Alabama woods, collecting samples. By nine o’clock he was in his laboratory, praying Scripture as he began his work: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. My help cometh from the Lord who made heaven and earth, and all that in them is.” George was a popular teacher, even starting a Bible class for his students, which he taught every week on Sunday evenings for more than three decades.
Carver was greatly interested in sweet potatoes and peanuts—“two of the greatest products that God has ever given us,” he said. Sweet potatoes and peanuts provided essential nutritional supplements to southern diets and could be easily and cheaply grown by the average farmer. Furthermore, they would not deplete the soil, like cotton did. People would ask Carver how he came up with so many innovative and unusual ideas for using peanuts and sweet potatoes. “I don’t make these discoveries,” he answered. “God has worked through me to reveal to his children some of his wonderful providence.”
He kept in touch with the local farmers, black and white, and helped them to implement more productive methods. He published an advisory bulletin, written in plain language. The annual Farmer’s Conference soon became one of the largest and most important events in the state. Booker T. Washington’s ambition and skillful promotion and Carver’s training and teaching placed Tuskegee Institute in the mainstream, and sometimes the forefront, of early agricultural education. George Carver was a mainstay of Tuskegee's faculty for forty-seven years.
Carver's vision made him a "blazer of trails" to a sustainable future--one in which each generation of humankind will achieve its well-being in ways that protect the earth and its ecosystems, leaving them intact and fruitful for all generations to come. The biographer L. O. McMurry writes of Carver, “[He was] a dreamer with a vision of a better world,” where “Love is more powerful than hate.” By 1938 Carver’s health began a slow, steady decline. Near the end of his life he wrote to a friend, “When you get your grip on the last rung of the ladder and look over the wall as I am doing, you don’t need proofs. You see. You know you will not die.” He died on 5 January 1943 and is buried on the campus of Tuskegee. Henry Ford said of him, “George Carver had the brain of a scientist and the heart of a saint.”
George’s life circumstances, perhaps like few others, provided him reason to become a bitter and vengeful man, full of hate and unforgiveness. Instead, George experienced and modeled God’s abiding grace, call, and vision, for almost eighty years. This is a remarkable story of faithfulness.
-Karen O’Dell Bullock
Moses and Susan took the youngest boys into their home and cared for them as if they were their own children. George and his brother were welcome at the church, where he listened to the sermons of traveling Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian preachers, acquiring a nondenominational faith. He memorized and recited Bible verses. He sang hymns and learned to play the church piano. “God just came into my heart one afternoon” when he was eight or nine years old, he wrote years later, “while I was alone in the loft of our big barn, shelling corn to carry to the mill to be ground into meal.” His faith would under-gird and provide the reason for his existence from this moment forward.
In those days, George was not allowed to attend public school because of the color of his skin, so Susan taught George to read and write and, when the bright scholar turned thirteen, the Carvers sent him to a school, eight miles away. There in Neosho he boarded with a devout black couple, Andrew and Mariah Watkins, who took him to the African Methodist Episcopal Church. They gave him a Bible for Christmas, which he carried with him and read every day for the rest of his life.
George was a brilliant lad, excelling in all of his subjects easily. He attended colleges, art, and music schools in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Alabama. He earned bachelor and master degrees, painted masterfully, and was an accomplished musician. He loved the out of doors, marveled at all that God had made, and was convinced that science was essential for helping humans to explain the awesomeness of Creator-God. George in time became one of the most influential scientists the world has ever seen.
Biographer-scientist John Ferrell said of him, “Far from resembling an environmentalist as that term is currently understood, Carver was a potentially puzzling combination of nature mystic, saint, scientist, and business booster. He certainly stood in awe of creation as he found it, but his wonder was combined with a sense that God had placed in nature vast potential for human betterment. He was a St. Francis armed with test tubes, seeking, through scientific means, creation’s undiscovered fruits to enhance the well-being of all people.”
When Booker T. Washington, founder and president of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama, invited George to join the faculty to teach, George said he would come, pledging “to cooperate with you in doing all I can through Christ who strengtheneth me to better the conditions of our people.” George's job at Tuskegee was to teach classes in science, agriculture, and art, and to create and run a laboratory. He began with enthusiasm. Well before sunrise he was out walking in the Alabama woods, collecting samples. By nine o’clock he was in his laboratory, praying Scripture as he began his work: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. My help cometh from the Lord who made heaven and earth, and all that in them is.” George was a popular teacher, even starting a Bible class for his students, which he taught every week on Sunday evenings for more than three decades.
Carver was greatly interested in sweet potatoes and peanuts—“two of the greatest products that God has ever given us,” he said. Sweet potatoes and peanuts provided essential nutritional supplements to southern diets and could be easily and cheaply grown by the average farmer. Furthermore, they would not deplete the soil, like cotton did. People would ask Carver how he came up with so many innovative and unusual ideas for using peanuts and sweet potatoes. “I don’t make these discoveries,” he answered. “God has worked through me to reveal to his children some of his wonderful providence.”
He kept in touch with the local farmers, black and white, and helped them to implement more productive methods. He published an advisory bulletin, written in plain language. The annual Farmer’s Conference soon became one of the largest and most important events in the state. Booker T. Washington’s ambition and skillful promotion and Carver’s training and teaching placed Tuskegee Institute in the mainstream, and sometimes the forefront, of early agricultural education. George Carver was a mainstay of Tuskegee's faculty for forty-seven years.
Carver's vision made him a "blazer of trails" to a sustainable future--one in which each generation of humankind will achieve its well-being in ways that protect the earth and its ecosystems, leaving them intact and fruitful for all generations to come. The biographer L. O. McMurry writes of Carver, “[He was] a dreamer with a vision of a better world,” where “Love is more powerful than hate.” By 1938 Carver’s health began a slow, steady decline. Near the end of his life he wrote to a friend, “When you get your grip on the last rung of the ladder and look over the wall as I am doing, you don’t need proofs. You see. You know you will not die.” He died on 5 January 1943 and is buried on the campus of Tuskegee. Henry Ford said of him, “George Carver had the brain of a scientist and the heart of a saint.”
George’s life circumstances, perhaps like few others, provided him reason to become a bitter and vengeful man, full of hate and unforgiveness. Instead, George experienced and modeled God’s abiding grace, call, and vision, for almost eighty years. This is a remarkable story of faithfulness.
-Karen O’Dell Bullock
For Further Reading:
Federer, William. George Washington Carver: His Life and Faith in his Own Words. St. Louis. MO: Amerisearch, 2002.
Ferrell, John S. Fruits of Creation: A Look at Global Sustainability as Seen Through the Eyes of George Washington Carver. Shakopee, MN: Macalester, 1995.
Perry, John. Unshakable Faith: Booker T. Washington & George Washington Carver. Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1999.
Ferrell, John S. Fruits of Creation: A Look at Global Sustainability as Seen Through the Eyes of George Washington Carver. Shakopee, MN: Macalester, 1995.
Perry, John. Unshakable Faith: Booker T. Washington & George Washington Carver. Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1999.
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