George Washington Carver was an American agricultural scientist, educator, and inventor best known for promoting peanuts and other alternative crops to improve the lives of poor Southern farmers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He became a nationally celebrated figure whose work reshaped Southern agriculture and challenged racist assumptions about Black intellectual ability.
Early life and education
Carver was born into slavery in Missouri around 1864, just before the end of the Civil War, and was orphaned as a child after he and his mother were kidnapped by raiders; only he was recovered and returned to his enslavers, Moses and Susan Carver. Because of frail health and the lack of schools for Black children nearby, he left home as a boy and moved from town to town in Kansas and Missouri to obtain an education, working domestic and farm jobs along the way. In the 1880s he homesteaded briefly in Kansas and developed interests in botany, art, and music, even exhibiting some of his paintings. Carver eventually enrolled at Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University), becoming its first Black student and later earning both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in agricultural science, with research focused on plant diseases and soils.
Career at Tuskegee Institute
In 1896 Booker T. Washington recruited Carver to head the agricultural department at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, a school dedicated to educating African Americans in practical trades and professions. At Tuskegee, Carver had to build his laboratory essentially from scratch, scavenging discarded equipment while teaching classes in agriculture, botany, and related subjects. He designed a mobile classroom (the “Jesup wagon”) and organized farmers’ conferences to bring practical demonstrations of crop rotation, fertilization, and soil conservation directly to Black and white farmers who could not easily come to campus. Over time he turned Tuskegee’s agriculture program into a respected center for teaching, research, and outreach in the South.
Scientific work and the “Peanut Man”
Carver’s central agricultural message was that Southern farmers had exhausted their soils by over‑planting cotton and needed to rotate crops and add organic matter back to the land. He urged the planting of peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans, and other legumes that restored nitrogen to the soil while also providing food and potential cash products. To make these crops economically attractive, he experimented tirelessly and is credited with developing or promoting hundreds of uses—over 300 from peanuts alone, and many others from sweet potatoes, pecans, and soybeans, including items such as cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, and food products. Although relatively few of his specific products became major commercial successes and he patented only a handful of inventions, his bulletins, recipes, and demonstrations helped popularize these crops and laid groundwork for the modern peanut industry.
Public recognition and influence
Carver became one of the most famous scientists in the United States during his lifetime, often referred to in newspapers as “the Peanut Man.” He served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Agriculture during World War I on food and nutrition and advised farmers and policymakers on sustainable agriculture. In 1923, the NAACP awarded him its highest honor for outstanding achievement by an African American, and Time magazine later dubbed him a “Black Leonardo,” highlighting the breadth of his talents. He received the Roosevelt Medal in 1939 for his contributions to Southern agriculture and became the first African American to have a national monument dedicated to him after his death.
Faith, character, and legacy
Carver was deeply religious and often described his laboratory as “God’s little workshop,” seeing scientific investigation as a way to uncover God’s purposes in nature. Colleagues and students remembered him as modest, frugal, and intensely devoted to service rather than wealth; he famously turned down opportunities to leave Tuskegee for higher‑paying industrial positions. Beyond his technical work, he helped undermine racist stereotypes simply by the visibility of his achievements, mentoring young people, promoting interracial cooperation, and demonstrating that a Black scientist could be a national leader in research and education. Carver died on January 5, 1943, in Alabama; his birthday is commonly given as January 1864, and January 5 is now observed in the United States as George Washington Carver Recognition Day.
