October 8, 1896
Botanist and inventor George Washington Carver arrived in Tuskegee to direct the agricultural school at the Tuskegee Institute. Known as the “Peanut Man,” Carver earned international fame for his innovative use of alternative crops to cotton, including peanuts and sweet potatoes. He geared his work in Tuskegee to the “man farthest down” and brought extension resources and techniques to farmers through the Tuskegee Institute Movable School. Carver received many awards and honors, including the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP. He was inducted into the Alabama Men’s Hall of Fame, and the George Washington Carver Museum in Tuskegee commemorates his life and achievements.
Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.
George Washington Carver enrolled in college as an art major, but after seeing his skill at hybridizing plants, his art teacher suggested he study horticulture at Iowa State College of Agricultural and Mechanic Arts (now Iowa State University). (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of the Tuskegee University Archives)
George Washington Carver, standing in field, probably at Tuskegee, holding piece of soil, 1906. (Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
Much of George Washington Carver’s research aimed to ease sharecroppers’ dependence on cotton. He focused on less demanding crops that did not deplete the soil, such as sweet potatoes and cow peas. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History)
Tuskegee agricultural science pioneer George Washington Carver developed the “Movable School,” a wagon and later a truck that brought new tools and crops to farmers who could not travel to Tuskegee for instruction. The staff of three included, from left, a home agent, a registered nurse and a farm demonstration agent. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration)
George Washington Carver studied plant disease at Tuskegee Institute. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History)
George Washington Carver leads an anatomy class at Tuskegee Institute. Carver taught a wide range of scientific subjects. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of the Library of Congress)
Chemistry laboratory at Tuskegee Institute, c. 1902. George Washington Carver stands second from right, facing front. (Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
George Washington Carver (1865-1943) was a renowned scholar, scientist and artist. He was Iowa State University’s first African-American faculty member. Carver later became a distinguished faculty member at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University) in the field of agricultural science. His work was pivotal in weaning the South from its dependence on cotton farming, as he discovered commercial applications for crop alternatives such as peanuts and soybeans. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, photograph by Arthur Rothstein, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
Soon after George Washington Carver’s death in 1943, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made Carver’s boyhood home a national monument, the first to honor an African-American. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History)
George Washington Carver Museum, Tuskegee, 2006. (Jessamyn, Wikipedia)
For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.
