George Washington Carver: Black agricultural scientist and inventor

George Washington Carver was a Black agricultural scientist and inventor who was born into slavery. At a young age, Carver took a keen interest in plants and experimented with natural pesticides, fungicides, and soil conditioners. He became known as the “the plant doctor” to local farmers due to his ability to discern how to improve the health of their gardens, fields, and orchards.

He was accepted into all-white Highland College in Kansas but was later rejected when the administration learned he was Black. Despite this setback, Carver enrolled in Simpson College in Iowa, a Methodist school that admitted all qualified applicants. He was the first Black student at Iowa State Agricultural College (currently Iowa State University) and became the first African American to earn a Bachelor of Science degree.

In 1896, Carver earned his Master of Agriculture degree and immediately received several offers, the most attractive of which came from Booker T. Washington (whose last name Carver would later add to his own) of Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University). He would go on to teach and conduct research at Tuskegee Institute for decades. In addition, as the head of the Tuskegee Institute’s agricultural department, he helped develop crops and agricultural methods, such as crop rotation, that stabilized the livelihoods of many former slaves. He also contributed greatly to the education of Black Americans in universities and through mobile classrooms that brought lessons to farmers.

Carver is best known for discovering many uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans. In all, he developed more than 300 food, industrial and commercial products from peanuts, including milk, Worcestershire sauce, punches, cooking oils and salad oil, paper, cosmetics, soaps, and wood stains. However, many of these discoveries remained curiosities and did not find widespread applications.

Source: Black Innovators in STEM Who Changed the World (osg.org)