George Washington Carver

TITLE: [George Washington Carver, full-length portrait, seated on steps (bottom center), facing front, with staff], CALL NUMBER: LOT 13164-C, no. 103 [P&P] REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-DIG-ppmsca-05633 (digital file from modern print), No known restrictions on publication.

Digital ID: ppmsca 05633 Source: digital file from modern b&w print Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-ppmsca-05633 (digital file from modern print) Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA Retrieve higher resolution JPEG version (147 kilobytes)

MEDIUM: 1 photographic print. CREATED, PUBLISHED: [ca. 1902], CREATOR: Johnston, Frances Benjamin, 1864-1952, photographer.

Works published prior to 1978 were copyright protected for a maximum of 75 years. See Circular 1 "COPYRIGHT BASICS" from the U.S. Copyright Office. Works published works before 1923 (THIS IMAGE) are now in the public domain.

NOTES: Title devised by Library staff. Reference copy (modern print) in BIOG FILE - Carver, George Washington. Forms part of: Booker T. Washington Collection (Library of Congress). Original negative may be available: LC-J694-159.

PART OF: Visual materials from the Booker T. Washington papers. REPOSITORY: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. DIGITAL ID: (digital file from modern b&w print) ppmsca 05633 hdl.loc.gov/ppmsca.05633 , CARD #: 2004671560

MARC Record Line 540 - No known restrictions on publication.

Credit Line: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [reproduction number, LC-DIG-ppmsca-05633]

George Washington Carver From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Washington Carver (July 12, 1864 – January 5, 1943) was an American botanical researcher and agronomy educator who worked in agricultural extension at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, teaching former slaves farming techniques for self-sufficiency.

To bring education to farmers, Carver designed a mobile school. It was called a Jesup Wagon after the New York financier, Morris Ketchum Jesup, who provided funding. In 1921, Carver spoke in favor of a peanut tariff before the House Ways and Means Committee. Given racial discrimination of the time, it was unusual for an African-American to be called as an expert. Carver's well-received testimony earned him national attention, and he became an unofficial spokesman for the peanut industry. Carver wrote 44 practical agricultural bulletins for farmers.

In the post-Civil-War South, an agricultural monoculture of cotton had depleted the soil, and in the early 1900s, the boll weevil destroyed much of the cotton crop. Much of Carver's fame was based on his research and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes. He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops as both a source of their own food and a cash crop. His most popular bulletin contained 105 existing food recipes that used peanuts. His most famous method of promoting the peanut involved his creation of about 100 existing industrial products from peanuts, including cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, gasoline and nitroglycerin. His industrial products from peanuts excited the public imagination but none was a successful commercial product. There are many myths about Carver, especially the myth that his industrial products from peanuts played a major role in revolutionizing Southern agriculture.

Carver's most important accomplishments were in areas other than industrial products from peanuts, including agricultural extension education, improvement of racial relations, mentoring children, poetry, painting, religion, advocacy of sustainable agriculture and appreciation of plants and nature. He served as a valuable role model for African-Americans and an example of the importance of hard work, a positive attitude and a good education. His humility, humanitarianism, good nature, frugality and lack of economic materialism have also been widely admired.

One of his most important roles was that the fame of his achievements and many talents undermined the widespread stereotype of the time that the black race was intellectually inferior to the white race. In 1941, "Time" magazine dubbed him a "Black Leonardo," a reference to the white polymath Leonardo da Vinci.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article, George Washington Carver

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