George Washington Carver Facts
George Washington Carver Facts
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| Interesting George Washington Carver Facts: |
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| George Washington Carver was born a slave near Diamond, Missouri. |
| His master, Moses Carver, had purchased George's parents on October 9, 1855, for $700. |
| After slavery was abolished, Moses Carver and his wife Susan raised George and his brother James as their own children and taught them to read. |
| After learning that there was a school for Negroes ten miles away in Neosho, Carver walked there; due to the long walk, he arrived after school was closed. |
| He met a kind woman, Mariah Watkins, who told him he was no longer "Carver's George" but George Carver and told him to learn all that he could and to share it with the people. |
| Carver attended a series of schools before finally earning his diploma at Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas. |
| He entered Iowa State University in 1891 and was its first black student. |
| He received his B.S. degree in 1894 and continued to study for his M.S. |
| His work on plant pathology and mycology gained him national recognition and he became the first black faculty member of the college. |
| In 1896, Booker T. Washington, the president of Tuskegee Institute, asked Carver to chair its Agriculture Department. |
| During his 47 year tenure at Tuskegee, Carver built the department into a strong research center. |
| He experimented with crop rotation and alternative crops like peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes that would restore nitrogen to soils depleted by cotton farming. |
| He developed an agricultural extension program for Alabama similar to the one he had seen at Iowa State to train farmers in crop rotation methods. |
| His mobile classroom he took to the farms he called the "Jesup wagon" after philanthropist Morris Jesup, who had provided the funding. |
| From 1915 to 1923 Carver researched new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans, pecans and other crops and distributed recipes for their use. |
| The United Peanut Associations of America invited Carver to speak at their 1920 convention where he exhibited 145 peanut products. |
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