George Washington Carver (c. 1864 – January 5, 1943) was an American scientist and inventor who encouraged growing other crops instead of cotton and taught ways to keep soil healthy. He was one of the most well-known Black scientists in the early 1900s.

While working as a professor at Tuskegee Institute, Carver created methods to help soil that had become weak from growing cotton many times. He wanted poor farmers to grow crops like peanuts and sweet potatoes for food and to improve their lives. At Tuskegee, the Experiment Station published more than forty helpful guides for farmers. Many of these guides, written by Carver, included recipes and advice on how to care for soil with little money, grow better crops, and store food properly.

In addition to helping farmers, Carver worked to protect the environment. He received many awards for his work, including the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP. During a time when racial tensions were high, Carver was respected and admired by people of all races. In 1941, Time magazine called Carver a "Black Leonardo."

Early years

George Carver was born into slavery in Diamond Grove, now called Diamond in Newton County, Missouri, near Crystal Palace, sometime in the early 1860s. His exact birth date is unknown, and he did not know it because he was born before slavery ended in Missouri, which happened in January 1865 during the American Civil War. His owner, Moses Carver, who was from a family of German or English immigrants, bought George’s parents, Mary and Giles, from William P. McGinnis on October 9, 1855, for $700 (about $18,609 in 2024).

Giles died before George was born, and when George was one week old, he, his sister, and his mother were kidnapped by thieves from Arkansas. George’s brother, James, was taken to safety by others. The kidnappers sold the three of them in Kentucky. Moses Carver hired John Bentley to find them, but Bentley only located the infant George. Moses Carver then negotiated with the kidnappers to bring George back and gave Bentley a reward. After slavery ended, Moses and his wife, Susan, raised George and his older brother, James, as their own children. They supported George’s learning, and Susan taught him to read and write.

At the time, Black people were not allowed to attend the public school in Diamond Grove. George decided to go to a school for Black children 10 miles (16 kilometers) south, in Neosho. When he arrived, the school was closed for the night. He slept in a nearby barn. The next morning, he met a kind woman named Mariah Watkins and asked to rent a room. When he introduced himself as “Carver’s George,” as he had always done, she said, “From now on, your name is ‘George Carver.’” George liked Mariah Watkins, and her words, “You must learn all you can, then go back out into the world and give your learning back to the people,” left a strong impression on him.

At age 13, George moved to Fort Scott, Kansas, to live with another foster family because he wanted to attend a school there. After seeing a Black man killed by a group of white people, George left the city. He attended several schools before earning his diploma at Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas.

While in Minneapolis, another person named George Carver lived in the town, which caused confusion about receiving mail. To solve this, George chose a middle initial at random and asked people to address letters to him as “George W. Carver.” Someone once asked if the “W” stood for Washington, and George smiled and said, “Why not?” However, he never used Washington as his middle name and signed his name as either “George W. Carver” or simply “George Carver.”

College education

George Carver applied to several colleges before being accepted to Highland University in Highland, Kansas. When he arrived, the university refused to let him attend because of his race. In August 1886, Carver traveled by wagon with J. F. Beeler from Highland to Eden Township in Ness County, Kansas. He claimed land near Beeler, where he grew plants and flowers and collected rocks and minerals. He plowed 17 acres (about 69,000 square meters) of the land, planting rice, corn, Indian corn, vegetables, fruit trees, forest trees, and shrubs. He also worked odd jobs in town and helped on a ranch.

In early 1888, Carver borrowed $300 (about $10,750 in 2025) from the Bank of Ness City to pay for education. By June, he left the area. In 1890, Carver began studying art and piano at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. His art teacher, Etta Budd, noticed his skill in painting flowers and plants and encouraged him to study botany at Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) in Ames.

When he started there in 1891, he became the first Black student at Iowa State. His bachelor's thesis for an agriculture degree was titled "Plants as Modified by Man," completed in 1894. Professors Joseph Budd and Louis Pammel from Iowa State encouraged Carver to earn a master's degree. Over the next two years, Carver worked at the Iowa Agricultural and Home Economics Experiment Station under Pammel, studying plant diseases and fungi. His research earned him national recognition as a botanist. Carver received his master's degree in 1896 and became the first African American faculty member at Iowa State.

Although some people called him "doctor," Carver never officially earned a doctorate. In a personal message to Pammel, he explained that the title was a mistake given by others because of his skills and their assumptions about his education. However, Simpson College and Selma University honored him with honorary science doctorates during his lifetime. In 1994, Iowa State University gave him a posthumous doctor of humane letters degree.

Tuskegee Institute

In 1896, Booker T. Washington, the first principal and president of the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), invited George Washington Carver to lead its Agriculture Department. Carver taught there for 47 years, helping to build the department into a strong research center. During his time at Tuskegee, he worked with two other college presidents. He taught farmers about crop rotation, introduced new crops that helped improve soil after years of growing cotton, started research into using crops to make products, and taught farming skills to many Black students to help them become self-sufficient.

Carver created a mobile classroom to bring education to farmers. He named it the "Jesup wagon" after Morris Ketchum Jesup, a New York financier who funded the program.

To bring Carver to Tuskegee, Washington offered him a higher-than-average salary and two rooms for his personal use. However, some faculty members were upset about these special arrangements. Because Carver had earned a master’s degree in a scientific field from a "white" university, some faculty members thought he was arrogant. At the time, unmarried faculty members usually shared small rooms, with two people in each.

One of Carver’s responsibilities was managing the Agricultural Experiment Station farms. He oversaw the production and sale of farm goods to help fund the institute. However, he struggled with administration and had disagreements with other faculty members, especially George Ruffin Bridgeforth. In 1900, Carver said the physical work and writing tasks were too much for him.

In 1904, an institute committee found that Carver had exaggerated reports about the number of chickens raised on the farm. Washington asked Carver to explain. Carver wrote, "To be called a liar and involved in such dishonesty is more than I can bear. If your committee believes I lied, my resignation is yours to accept." During Washington’s final five years at Tuskegee, Carver submitted or threatened to resign several times: when the institute reorganized the agriculture programs, when he disliked a teaching assignment, when he wanted to manage a different experiment station, and when he did not get summer teaching assignments in 1913–14. In each case, Washington resolved the issues.

Carver began his career as a researcher and teacher. In 1911, Washington wrote to Carver, complaining that he had not planted the crops Washington had ordered at the experiment station. This showed Washington’s close control over Carver’s department, which Carver had led for over 10 years. At the same time, Washington refused Carver’s requests for a new laboratory, research supplies for his use, and time off from teaching. Washington praised Carver’s teaching and research skills but said he had poor administrative abilities.

In 1911, Carver complained that the laboratory had not received equipment Washington had promised 11 months earlier. He also had issues with institute committee meetings. In his 1911 memoir, My Larger Education: Being Chapters from My Experience, Washington called Carver "one of the most thoroughly scientific men of the Negro race with whom I am acquainted." After Washington died in 1915, his successor asked Carver to do fewer administrative tasks.

From 1915 to 1923, Carver focused on researching new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans, pecans, and other crops. He also had assistants study and collect information about existing uses for these crops. His work, especially his speeches at a national conference of the Peanut Growers Association in 1920 and his testimony before Congress in 1921 to support a tariff on imported peanuts, made him well-known. During these years, Carver became one of the most famous African Americans of his time.

Rise to fame

George Washington Carver created methods to help soil that had become poor from growing cotton many times. With other agricultural experts, he encouraged farmers to add nitrogen back into the soil by using a planned method called crop rotation. This involved planting cotton next to crops like sweet potatoes or legumes, such as peanuts, soybeans, and cowpeas. These plants helped restore nitrogen to the soil and were also useful for people to eat.

Using crop rotation improved cotton harvests and gave farmers other crops to sell for money. To teach farmers how to grow and rotate these crops, Carver started an agricultural program in Alabama that was similar to one in Iowa State. He also shared recipes that used the new crops to help people eat better.

Carver started an industrial research lab where he and his helpers found many ways to use the new crops. They did their own research and shared ideas and recipes they found from others. He shared his findings in printed reports called agricultural bulletins.

Before becoming famous, Carver's work was already known by people in the government. President Theodore Roosevelt admired his efforts. Former professors from Iowa State University, including James Wilson and Henry Cantwell Wallace, held important government jobs. Henry Wallace’s son, Henry A. Wallace, was friends with Carver and later became U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President.

William C. Edenborn, a farmer and inventor from Louisiana, grew peanuts on his farm and worked with Carver. In 1916, Carver became a member of the Royal Society of Arts in England, a rare honor for an American at that time. His work with peanuts received the most attention.

By 1920, U.S. peanut farmers faced competition from cheaper peanuts imported from China. In 1921, farmers and industry leaders planned to ask Congress for higher prices on imported peanuts. Because of Carver’s clear presentation at a meeting, they asked him to speak about this issue before a government committee. It was unusual for an African American to testify at that time, but Carver shared examples of peanut milk, peanut flour, and industrial dyes made from peanuts. Although some Southern lawmakers laughed at him, Carver’s detailed explanations led the committee to spend more time listening. In 1922, the Fordney–McCumber Tariff was passed, which included a tax on imported peanuts. Carver’s work with peanuts and his testimony made him well-known as a public figure.

Life while famous

During the last 20 years of his life, George Washington Carver seemed happy with his fame. He often traveled to promote Tuskegee University, peanuts, sweet potatoes, and racial harmony. After 1922, he published only six agricultural bulletins, but he wrote articles for peanut industry journals and a newspaper column called "Professor Carver's Advice." Business leaders often asked him for help, and he gave them advice for free. Three U.S. presidents—Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Franklin D. Roosevelt—met with him. The Crown Prince of Sweden also studied with him for three weeks. From 1923 to 1933, Carver traveled to white Southern colleges for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation.

As Carver became more well-known, people wrote about him in biographies and articles. In 1929, Raleigh H. Merritt wrote a biography about him. In 1932, James Saxon Childers wrote that Carver and his peanut products were mostly responsible for the increase in U.S. peanut production after the boll weevil harmed cotton crops starting around 1892. His article, "A Boy Who Was Traded for a Horse" (1932), published in The American Magazine and later in Reader's Digest, helped spread this idea about Carver's influence. Other media often exaggerated how much Carver helped the peanut industry.

From 1933 to 1935, Carver worked to develop peanut oil massages to treat infantile paralysis (polio). Researchers later found that the massages, not the peanut oil, helped keep some movement in paralyzed limbs.

From 1935 to 1937, Carver participated in the USDA Disease Survey. He had studied plant diseases and mycology for his master's degree.

In 1937, Carver attended two chemurgy conferences, a new field in the 1930s during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, which focused on creating products from crops. He was invited by Henry Ford to speak at a conference in Dearborn, Michigan, and they became friends. That year, Carver's health worsened, and Ford later built an elevator at the Tuskegee dormitory where Carver lived so he would not have to climb stairs.

Carver lived simply and, in his 70s, created a museum of his work. In 1938, he also started the George Washington Carver Foundation at Tuskegee to continue agricultural research. He donated nearly $60,000 (equivalent to $1,372,340 in 2025) from his savings to fund the foundation.

Relationships

George Carver never married. When he was 40 years old, he began a romantic relationship with Sarah L. Hunt, an elementary school teacher and the sister-in-law of Warren Logan, who was the Treasurer of Tuskegee Institute. This relationship lasted three years until Sarah accepted a teaching job in California. In her 2015 biography, Christina Vella examined Carver’s relationships and noted that he may have been bisexual, but his personal choices were influenced by the social norms of his time.

At age 70, Carver formed a friendship and research partnership with Austin W. Curtis Jr., a young Black scientist who graduated from Cornell University and had teaching experience before joining Tuskegee Institute. Carver gave Curtis his royalties from an authorized 1943 biography written by Rackham Holt. After Carver died in 1943, Curtis was fired from Tuskegee Institute. He left Alabama and moved to Detroit, where he created and sold personal care products made from peanuts.

Death

After returning home one day, George Washington Carver fell down a flight of stairs and was found unconscious by a maid, who took him to the hospital. He died on January 5, 1943, at the age of 78 or 79 due to complications from anemia caused by the fall. He was painting a Christmas card with the message, "Peace on earth and goodwill to all men," when he passed away. Carver biographer Prema Ramakrishnan stated, "His death was characteristic of him and his entire life's work." He was buried next to Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee University. Carver donated all of his life savings, which totaled $60,000, to the Carver Museum and the George Washington Carver Foundation during his final years. On his grave, it was written, "He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world."

Personal life

George Washington Carver believed he could have faith in God and science and combined them in his life. He often said that his belief in Jesus was the only way he could successfully study and practice science. Carver became a Christian when he was a young boy, as he wrote in a letter dated July 24, 1931:

— G. W. Carver; Letter to Isabelle Coleman; July 24, 1931

Doctors thought he would not live past age 21 because of poor health. However, he lived much longer than expected, and his faith grew stronger over time. Throughout his career, he remained friends with other Christians. He relied on their support when scientists and the media criticized his research methods.

Carver saw faith in Jesus Christ as a way to help end racial conflicts and unfair social divisions. He cared as much about teaching his students good character as he did about teaching them knowledge. He created a list of "eight important virtues" that he believed defined what it meant to be a lady or a gentleman.

Starting in 1906 at Tuskegee Institute, Carver taught a Bible class on Sundays for several students who asked him to. He often acted out Bible stories to help others understand them.

Even as an adult, Carver spoke with a high-pitched voice. Historian Linda O. McMurry noted that he was a weak and often ill child who suffered from a severe case of whooping cough and frequent illnesses called croup. She suggested that his slow growth and possible problems with his vocal cords might have been caused by infections like tuberculosis or pneumonia. These infections could have led to growths on his vocal cords and may have been linked to a lack of a protein called gamma globulin. His high-pitched voice surprised people throughout his life, and he often had chest congestion and trouble speaking.

Carver loved crocheting, and examples of his work are still displayed and kept in archives today. In 1941, an exhibit of his crocheting was shown at the George Washington Carver Museum. Many pieces, such as lace edging and doilies, were included in the display. These items are now part of the collection at the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site.

Honors

• 1923, Received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP, an award given each year for great achievements.
• 1928, Received an honorary doctorate from Simpson College.
• 1939, Won the Roosevelt Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Southern Agriculture.
• 1940, Founded the George Washington Carver Foundation at the Tuskegee Institute.
• 1941, The George Washington Carver Museum was opened at the Tuskegee Institute.
• 1942, Ford created a copy of Carver's birth cabin at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn as a tribute.
• 1942, Ford opened a laboratory in Dearborn named after Carver.
• 1943, The Liberty ship SS George Washington Carver was launched.
• 1947, George Washington Carver Area High School, named after him, opened in Chicago, Illinois.
• 1950, George Washington Carver State Park was named.
• 1951–1954, The U.S. Mint included Carver on a 50-cent silver commemorative coin.
• 1965, The ballistic missile submarine USS George Washington Carver (SSBN-656) was launched.
• 1969, Iowa State University built Carver Hall in his honor, as he was a graduate of the university.
• 1943?, The U.S. Congress set January 5, the anniversary of his death, as George Washington Carver Recognition Day.
• 1999, The USDA named part of its Beltsville, Maryland campus the George Washington Carver Center.
• 2002, Received the Iowa Award, the state’s highest citizen award.
• 2004, The George Washington Carver Bridge was built in Des Moines, Iowa.
• 2007, The Missouri Botanical Gardens created a garden area named after Carver, with a statue and information about his work.
• 2022, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law naming February 1st every year as George Washington Carver Day in Iowa.
• Willowbrook Neighborhood Park in Willowbrook, California was renamed George Washington Carver Park in his honor.
• Schools named after Carver include: George Washington Carver Elementary School in Compton, California; George Washington Carver School of Arts and Science in Sacramento, California; and Dr. George Washington Carver Elementary School in Newark, New Jersey.
• Organisms named after him include: Colletotrichum carveri and Metasphaeria carveri (named in 1902); Cercospora carveriana (named in 1906); Taphrina carveri (named in 1939); and Pestalotia carveri (named in 1961).
• 2025, The Montgomery Biscuits will use the name "Alabama Peanut Runners" for two games on August 28 and August 31, 2025, to honor George Washington Carver and his work with peanuts.

Legacy

A movement to create a U.S. national monument to George Washington Carver started before he died. Because of World War II, the president had stopped spending money on things not related to the war. Missouri senator Harry S. Truman supported a bill to build a monument. During a meeting about the bill, one person who supported it said:

The bill passed without any disagreements in both the House and Senate.

On July 14, 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved $30,000 (~$433,687 in 2024) to create the George Washington Carver National Monument, located west-southwest of Diamond, Missouri, where Carver spent time as a child. This was the first national monument for an African American and the first to honor someone who was not a president. The 210-acre (0.8 km²) monument includes a statue of Carver, a nature trail, a museum, the 1881 Moses Carver house, and the Carver cemetery. The monument opened in July 1953.

In December 1947, a fire damaged the Carver Museum, and most of its collection was lost. Time magazine reported that 45 of the 48 Carver paintings at the museum were destroyed. One of his most famous paintings, shown at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, showed a yucca and cactus. This painting survived and has been restored. It is now displayed with other paintings. Carver appeared on U.S. 1948 commemorative stamps. From 1951 to 1954, his image was on the Carver-Washington half dollar coin with Booker T. Washington. A second stamp, worth 32¢, was released on February 3, 1998, as part of the Celebrate the Century series. Two ships, the Liberty ship SS George Washington Carver and the nuclear submarine USS George Washington Carver (SSBN-656), were named in his honor.

In 1977, Carver was added to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. In 1990, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 1994

Reputed inventions

George Washington Carver is often credited in popular stories for many inventions that were not created in his laboratory. Three patents were issued to Carver between 1925 and 1927: one for a cosmetics product (US 1522176, issued January 6, 1925) and two for paints and stains (US 1541478, issued June 9, 1925, and US 1632365, issued June 14, 1927). However, these inventions were not successful in the marketplace.

Besides these patents and some recipes for food, Carver did not leave written records of how he made his products. He did not keep a laboratory notebook. Mackintosh wrote that Carver did not say he discovered all the uses of peanuts he described, but he did not stop people from believing he had.

Carver’s research aimed to create products from common crops that could replace expensive items, which were often too costly for small farmers. A misunderstanding developed that his work for subsistence farmers was later used by others to change Southern agriculture. Carver’s efforts to help small farmers become more self-reliant by reducing their dependence on money-based economies helped inspire later work on "appropriate technology" by E. F. Schumacher.

Dennis Keeney, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, wrote in the Leopold Letter:

Carver spent years trying to create a company to sell his products. The most important was the Carver Penol Company, which sold a mixture of creosote and peanuts as a patent medicine for respiratory diseases like tuberculosis. Sales were low, and the product was not effective according to the Food and Drug Administration. Other companies included The Carver Products Company and the Carvoline Company. Carvoline Antiseptic Hair Dressing was a mix of peanut oil and lanolin. Carvoline Rubbing Oil was peanut oil used for massages.

Carver is often incorrectly credited with inventing peanut butter. By 1916, when Carver published "How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it For Human Consumption," many methods for making peanut butter had already been developed or patented by pharmacists, doctors, and food scientists in the United States and Canada. The Aztecs made peanut butter from ground peanuts as early as the 15th century. Canadian pharmacist Marcellus Gilmore Edson received U.S. patent 306,727 for peanut butter in 1884, 12 years before Carver began his work at Tuskegee.

Carver is also linked to sweet potato products. In his 1922 sweet potato bulletin, he listed several recipes, many of which he copied directly from Bulletin No. 129 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. His records included these sweet potato products: 73 dyes, 17 wood fillers, 14 candies, 5 library pastes, 5 breakfast foods, 4 starches, 4 flours, and 3 molasses. He also listed products such as vinegars, dry coffee, instant coffee, candy, after-dinner mints, orange drops, and lemon drops.

Carver bulletins

During his more than 40 years at Tuskegee, Carver's official published work focused on 44 practical guides for farmers. His first guide, published in 1898, discussed feeding acorns to farm animals. His last guide, published in 1943, covered the peanut. He also wrote six guides on sweet potatoes, five on cotton, and four on cowpeas. Other guides included topics such as alfalfa, wild plum, tomato, ornamental plants, corn, poultry, dairying, hogs, preserving meats in hot weather, and nature study in schools.

His most popular guide, How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption, was first published in 1916 and has been reprinted many times. It includes a brief overview of growing peanuts and a list of recipes from other agricultural guides, cookbooks, magazines, and newspapers, such as the Peerless Cookbook, Good Housekeeping, and Berry's Fruit Recipes. While Carver's guide was not the first American agricultural publication about peanuts, his guides appear to have been more widely read and shared than earlier ones.

General references

Barry Mackintosh wrote an article titled "George Washington Carver: The Making of a Myth" in the Journal of Southern History, volume 42, issue 4, in 1976. Pages 507 to 528. This article can be found in JSTOR. Barry Mackintosh also wrote an article titled "George Washington Carver and the Peanut: New Light on a Much-loved Myth" in American Heritage, volume 28, issue 5, pages 66 to 73, published in 1977. L. O. McMurry wrote an entry titled "Carver, George Washington" in the American National Biography Online, published in February 2000. Linda O. McMurry wrote a book titled George Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol, published by Oxford University Press in 1982. The book is available online, with an archived version from June 28, 2011, on the Wayback Machine. A copy is also available on Google. George Washington Carver wrote a brief history of his life titled "1897 or Thereabouts: George Washington Carver's Own Brief History of His Life," which is available at the George Washington Carver National Monument. David R. Collins wrote a book titled George Washington Carver: Man's Slave, God's Scientist, published by Mott Media in 1981. William J. Federer wrote a book titled George Washington Carver: His Life & Faith in His Own Words, published by AmeriSearch in 2003. The book has ISBN 0-9653557-6-4. G. R. Kremer edited a book titled George Washington Carver: In His Own Words, published by the University of Missouri Press in 1987. A reprint edition was published in 1991, with ISBN 978-0-8262-0785-2. H. M. Morris wrote a book titled Men of Science, Men of God, published in 1982. E. C. Barnett and D. Fisher wrote a book titled Scientists Who Believe, published in 1984.