Note: When in the midst of February, America's "Black History Month", I invariably think of the great George Washington Carver - but then his contributions to America and the world are so profound that it is not only in February that I am reminded of his brilliance but throughout the entire year. As someone who has been involved in agriculture in the South I cannot help but acknowledge that it was Carver who "saved the South", as Atlanta's urban farmer Rashid Nuri as profoundly noted, and virtually anyone else knowledgeable about agriculture has said the same. Carver taught farmers - both black and white - that "king" cotton was depleting the soil and that there needed to be rotation crops of legumes to replenish the soil with nitrogen. Countless farmers throughout the region followed his advice - he "saved the South" as a result. And "saving the South" but touches the surface of his profound accomplishments. Below are also some of his renowned quotes.
Heather Gray George Washington Carver AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL CHEMIST WRITTEN BY: The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica LAST UPDATED: 2-17-2017 See Article History 
George Washington Carver, (born 1861?, near Diamond Grove, Missouri, U.S.-died January 5, 1943, Tuskegee, Alabama), American agricultural chemist, agronomist, and experimenter whose development of new products derived from peanuts (groundnuts), sweet potatoes, and soybeans helped revolutionize the agricultural economy of the South. For most of his career he taught and conducted research at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Tuskegee, Alabama.
Carver was born into slavery, the son of a slave woman named Mary, owned by Moses Carver. During the American Civil War, the Carver farm was raided, and infant George and his mother were kidnapped and taken to Arkansas to be sold. Moses Carver was eventually able to track down young George but was unable to find Mary. Frail and sick, the motherless child was returned to his master's home and nursed back to health. With the complete abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, George was no longer a slave. Nevertheless, he remained on the Carver plantation until he was about 10 or 12 years old, when he left to acquire an education. He spent some time wandering about, working with his hands and developing his keen interest in plants and animals. He learned to draw, and later in life he devoted considerable time to painting flowers, plants, and landscapes. By both books and experience, George acquired a fragmentary education while doing whatever work came to hand in order to subsist. He supported himself by varied occupations that included general household worker, hotel cook, laundryman, farm labourer, and homesteader. In his late 20s he managed to obtain a high school education in Minneapolis, Kansas, while working as a farmhand. After a university in Kansas refused to admit him because he was black, Carver matriculated at Simpson College, Indianola, Iowa, where he studied piano and art, subsequently transferring to Iowa State Agricultural College (later Iowa State University), where he received a bachelor's degree in agricultural science in 1894 and a master of science degree in 1896. Carver left Iowa for Alabama in the fall of 1896 to direct the newly organized department of agriculture at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, a school headed by noted African American educator Booker T. Washington. At Tuskegee, Washington was trying to improve the lot of African Americans through education and the acquisition of useful skills rather than through political agitation; he stressed conciliation, compromise, and economic development as the paths for black advancement in American society. Despite many offers elsewhere, Carver would remain at Tuskegee for the rest of his life. After becoming the institute's director of agricultural research in 1896, Carver devoted his time to research projects aimed at helping Southern agriculture, demonstrating ways in which farmers could improve their economic situation. He conducted experiments in soil management and crop production and directed an experimental farm. At this time agriculture in the Deep South was in steep decline because the unremitting single-crop cultivation of cotton had left the soil of many fields exhausted and worthless, and erosion had then taken its toll on areas that could no longer sustain any plant cover. As a remedy, Carver urged Southern farmers to plant peanuts (Arachis hypogaea) and soybeans (Glycine max). As members of the legume family (Fabaceae), these plants could restore nitrogen to the soil while also providing the protein so badly needed in the diet of many Southerners. Carver found that Alabama's soils were particularly well-suited to growing peanuts and sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas), but when the state's farmers began cultivating these crops instead of cotton, they found little demand for them on the market. In response to this problem, Carver set about enlarging the commercial possibilities of the peanut and sweet potato through a long and ingenious program of laboratory research. He ultimately developed 300 derivative products from peanuts-among them milk, flour, ink, dyes, plastics, wood stains, soap, linoleum, medicinal oils, and cosmetics-and 118 from sweet potatoes, including flour, vinegar, molasses, ink, a synthetic rubber, and postage stamp glue. In 1914, at a time when the boll weevil had almost ruined cotton growers, Carver revealed his experiments to the public, and increasing numbers of the South's farmers began to turn to peanuts, sweet potatoes, and their derivatives for income. Much exhausted land was renewed, and the South became a major new supplier of agricultural products. When Carver arrived at Tuskegee in 1896, the peanut had not even been recognized as a crop, but within the next half century it became one of the six leading crops throughout the United States and, in the South, the second cash crop (after cotton) by 1940. In 1942 the U.S. government allotted 2,023,428 hectares (5,000,000 acres) of peanuts to farmers. Carver's efforts had finally helped liberate the South from its excessive dependence on cotton. Among Carver's many honours were his election to Britain's Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (London) in 1916 and his receipt of the Spingarn Medal in 1923. Late in his career he declined an invitation to work for Thomas A. Edison at a salary of more than $100,000 a year. Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Franklin D. Roosevelt visited him, and his friends included Henry Ford and Mohandas K. Gandhi. Foreign governments requested his counsel on agricultural matters: Joseph Stalin, for example, in 1931 invited him to superintend cotton plantations in southern Russia and to make a tour of the Soviet Union, but Carver refused. In 1940 Carver donated his life savings to the establishment of the Carver Research Foundation at Tuskegee for continuing research in agriculture. During World War II he worked to replace the textile dyes formerly imported from Europe, and in all he produced dyes of 500 different shades. George Washington Carver Quotes and Sayings 1 Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom. 2 Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater. 3 How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these. 4 I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in. 5 I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life - but there was no one to tell me. 6 If you love it enough, anything will talk with you. 7 Learn to do common things uncommonly well; we must always keep in mind that anything that helps fill the dinner pail is valuable. 8 Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses. 9 No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving something behind. 10 Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise. 11 Our creator is the same and never changes despite the names given Him by people here and in all parts of the world. Even if we gave Him no name at all, He would still be there, within us, waiting to give us good on this earth. 12 Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God. 13 Since new developments are the products of a creative mind, we must therefore stimulate and encourage that type of mind in every way possible. 14 There is no short cut to achievement. Life requires thorough preparation - veneer isn't worth anything. 15 When our thoughts - which bring actions - are filled with hate against anyone, Negro or white, we are in a living hell. That is as real as hell will ever be. 16 When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world. 17 When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world. 18 Where there is no vision, there is no hope. |
0 comments:
Post a Comment