George Washington Carver

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George Washington Carver (1906)

George Washington Carver (* around 1864 in Missouri ; † 5. January 1943 in Tuskegee , Alabama ) was a botanist , chemist and inventor in agricultural research in the southern states of the USA . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " Carver ".

Born a slave himself , he later completed academic training and taught former slaves cultivation techniques for self-sufficiency. He was best known for inventing and developing hundreds of uses of the peanut and other crops to increase agricultural yields and diversify the cotton monoculture in Alabama . In 1921 he was the first African American to be heard as an expert in Congress .

childhood

Carver was in Missouri in the slavery born. The exact date of birth is unknown due to the inaccurate records of the slave owners, but it is believed that he was born in 1864/65. Its owner, Moses Carver, was a German immigrant. He was also the owner of his mother Mary and his brother. The Carvers treated them humanely. Carver's father is unknown, but Carver himself believed his father was from a neighboring farm and died in an accident shortly after he was born.

As a child, he and his mother were kidnapped by a gang hoping to sell them elsewhere - a common practice at the time. Moses Carver hired John Bentley to find her again. Carver's mother had already been sold, but Carver, nearly died, was brought back to Moses by Bentley. This event triggered chronic bronchitis in Carver, so that from then on he was always in a weakened physical condition. As a result, he was unable to work and spent his time wandering the fields, attracted by the variety of wild plants. He acquired such expertise that Moses' neighbors called him "the plant doctor".

One day he was called to a neighboring house to check on a sick plant. When he solved the problem, he was sent to the kitchen to collect his wages. When he got into the kitchen, he didn't find anyone there, but he saw something that would change his life: paintings of flowers on all the walls of the room. From then on he knew that he would be an artist as well as a botanist.

After slavery was abolished, George and his brother were adopted by the Carver couple. They supported George in his intellectual pursuit. When George turned twelve, much to the Carvers' chagrin, he decided to go alone. He moved away and his first destination was a school in another city.

Carver met a friendly woman with whom he agreed that he would be paid to cook for the family and thus go to school. He lived on the porch until he had enough money to buy a cabin. Eventually he was forced to leave the city because a black man had been lynched . He graduated from Minneapolis High School in Kansas .

Career as a botanist and chemist

George W. Carver in Tuskegee

In 1887 he was accepted into Simpson College, Indianola . He shone in art and music . Eventually the director of the Iowa State College Department of Horticulture , who was the father of art teacher Etta Budd, recognized Carver's horticultural talent through a garden beautification . Seeing difficulties ahead of a black artist, Etta Budd persuaded him to pursue a career in agriculture, and in 1891 he became the first black man to enroll at Iowa State College of Agriculture and Crafts (now Iowa State University ).

To avoid confusion with other students named George Carver, he began using the name George Washington Carver. Despite his quiet determination and reluctance, Carver was soon involved in all areas of college life.

He was the head of the YMCA and the Discussion Club, sports coach and captain, the highest grade student in the college military regiment. His poems were published in the student newspaper and two of his paintings were featured in the World Columbian Exposition .

Carver's keen interest in music and art remained, but it was his excellent botany and horticultural skills that persuaded Professors Joseph Budd and Louis Pammel to encourage him to stay at the college after his bachelor's degree in 1894. Because of his skills in plant breeding , Carver was appointed to the faculty and thus became its first African American member.

During the next two years as a botany assistant , Carver quickly developed scientific skills in herbal medicine and mycology . He published various articles about his work and gained national recognition. In 1896 he passed his master's degree .

He was then appointed to the Tuskegee Institute , headed by Booker T. Washington , as director of agriculture. He stayed there until his death in 1943.

In 1916 he was appointed as an honorary fellow at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, received the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP in 1923 and the Theodore Roosevelt Medal in 1939 . In 1921 he was the first African American to be heard as an expert before a committee of the US Congress .

In 1970 the lunar crater Carver and in 1996 the asteroid (7042) Carver were named after him.

Inventions

Carver went to great lengths to improve the living conditions of small farmers in the Southwest, especially former slaves. They were not only to be introduced to modern cultivation methods such as crop rotation and artificial fertilizers , but also to numerous methods that Carver had devised themselves, with which they could produce useful substances such as bleaching and cleaning agents, lubricants, spices, etc. from their cultivated products, which they would otherwise not be able to use could afford. To this end, he developed and operated a kind of mobile school, the Jesup Wagon , named after the sponsor Morris Ketchum Jesup . With it he drove overland to the farmers and explained this z. B. the condition of their soil or demonstrated the cultivation of potatoes and peanuts. This “learning by doing” had a snowball effect, because that is how the experts passed on what they had learned. Carver was already working under the Smith-Lever Act , which stipulated by law in 1914 that the new cultivation and planting methods developed in the state-sponsored experimental stations and agricultural colleges must be brought closer to all farmers.

Carver developed a method that helped polio sufferers treat their atrophied muscles. He rubbed the muscles with a certain peanut oil, which brought him an enormous influx of patients, all of whom were subjectively convinced that the treatment was beneficial. The medics, however, ignored the procedure. To date, it has not been adequately documented to what extent the successes were based on placebo effects or were treatment-specific.

Carver succeeded in developing a process for making paper from a type of softwood that only thrives in the southern United States. As a result, there was reforestation in areas that were previously barren or at best covered with bushes.

Carver was very successful in creating dyes from plants and developed hundreds of new plant dyes. From the Vitis rotundifolia vine alone , he was able to produce 49 dyes that could be used to dye materials such as wool and cotton.

As an agricultural chemist, Carver discovered about 300 uses for peanuts and 118 for sweet potatoes . He is often cited as the inventor of peanut butter .

His findings were of enormous importance, as the cultivation of peanuts represented an alternative to the predominant cotton monocultures in Alabama. At that time these were more and more infested by the cotton boll weevil, which led to the impoverishment of entire regions. With the peanut, a plant was available that was very frugal, easy to grow, stored nitrogen in the soil and, thanks to Carver, also had a large market.

In 1938 Pete Smith Specialty Company directed the Hollywood film Life of George Washington Carver.

Carver died in Tuskegee in 1943 after a long and serious illness. Since he was unmarried, he bequeathed his fortune (over 60,000 US dollars, more than 762,000 euros in today's value) to the George Washington Carver Foundation.

George Washington Carver National Monument

George Washington Carver National Monument.
House of Moses Carver with Jesup Wagon
House of Moses Carver with Jesup Wagon
George Washington Carver (USA)
Paris plan pointer b jms.svg
Coordinates: 36 ° 59 '12.4 "  N , 94 ° 21' 18.8"  W.
Location: Missouri , United States
Specialty: Memorial to George Washington Carver
Next city: Joplin
Surface: 0.8 km²
Founding: July 14, 1943
Visitors: 37,167 (2006)
i3 i6

In 1943, the property in Newton County near Diamond , Missouri, where George Washington Carver grew up, was declared a National Monument- Type Memorial . It was the first national monument ever erected in the United States for an African American , the first personal national monument not dedicated to a president , and shows the enormous importance that Carver was given. It is managed by the National Park Service and is one of the small National Monuments by area and number of visitors.

The memorial includes the reconstructed location of George Washington's mother Mary's hut, the home of Moses Carver, and the family cemetery. A visitor center with a small museum provides information about the life of George Washington Carver and slavery in the United States.

Publications

literature

  • Linda May. Edwards: George Washington Carver. The life of a great American agriculturist . PowerPlus Books, New York 2004, ISBN 0-8239-6633-X
  • Lawrence Elliott: The Man Who Lived. George W. Carver - a fascinating life story . Aussaat-Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1995, ISBN 3-7615-5100-2
  • Barbara Mitchell: A pocketful of goobers. A story about George Washington Carver . Carolrhoda, Minneapolis, Minn. 2001, ISBN 0-87614-474-1
  • Margaret V. Saunders: The Plant Doctor George Washington Carver . List, Munich 1949
  • Camilla J. Wilson: George Washington Carver. The genius behind the peanut . Scholastic Books, New York 2003, ISBN 0-439-28722-7
  • Glenn Clark: The man who talks to the flowers. The life story of Dr. George Washington Carvers . Turm Verlag, Bietigheim, ISBN 3-7999-0001-2
  • Gary Kremer Ed .: George Washington Carver: In His Own Words . Publisher: University of Missouri 1991, ISBN 978-0826207852
  • Eve Moore, Alexander Anderson (Illustrator): The Story Of George Washington Carver . Published by Scholastic Paperbacks 1990, ISBN 978-0590426602
  • David A. Adler, Dan Brown (Illustrator): A Picture Book of George Washington Carver. Published by Holiday House 2000, ISBN 978-0823416332
  • Otha Richard Sullivan, James Haskins: African American Inventors (Black Stars). Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; 1st edition 1998, ISBN 978-0471148043

Web links

Commons : George Washington Carver  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ca-Ch/Carver-George-Washington.html
  2. ↑ blackinventor.com: George Washington Carver
  3. ^ Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature
  4. ↑ Minor Planet Circ. 28622
  5. ↑ LIST OF PRODUCTS MADE FROM PEANUT
  6. ↑ LIST OF PRODUCTS MADE FROM SWEET POTATO
personal data
SURNAME Carver, George Washington
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American botanist
DATE OF BIRTH around 1864
DATE OF DEATH January 5, 1943
Place of death Tuskegee , Alabama