For additional fun facts on George Washington Carver, please visit our website. For additional teacher resources, click here. Here are historic sites you can visit around the United States to learn about George Washington Carver:. George Washington National Monument. Before sustainability was a pop culture topic, Carver promoted responsible farming practices, like planting peanuts in rotation with cotton since peanuts add nutrients to the soil. The George Washington Carver Museum in Tuskegee, Alabama, has a nutrition trail that features signs with nutritional facts and quotes from Carver.
Carver initially studied art and piano in hopes of earning a teaching degree, but one of his professors, Etta Budd, was skeptical of a Black man being able to make a living as an artist. Carver worked with famed mycologist fungal scientist L. Pammel at the Iowa State Experimental Station, honing his skills in identifying and treating plant diseases.
In , 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 George would later add to his own of Tuskegee Institute now Tuskegee University in Alabama. Carver accepted the offer and would work at Tuskegee Institute for the rest of his life. For one, agriculture training was not popular — Southern farmers believed they already knew how to farm and students saw schooling as a means to escape farming.
Additionally, many faculty members resented Carver for his high salary and demand to have two dormitory rooms, one for him and one for his plant specimens. Carver also struggled with the demands of the faculty position he held. Carver and Washington had a complicated relationship and would butt heads often, in part because Carver wanted little to do with teaching though he was beloved by his students.
Carver would eventually get his way when Washington died in and was succeeded by Robert Russa Moton, who relieved Carver of his teaching duties except for summer school. By this time, Carver already had great successes in the laboratory and the community.
He taught poor farmers that they could feed hogs acorns instead of commercial feed and enrich croplands with swamp muck instead of fertilizers. Through his work on soil chemistry, Carver learned that years of growing cotton had depleted the nutrients from soil, resulting in low yields. But by growing nitrogen-fixing plants like peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes, the soil could be restored, allowing yield to increase dramatically when the land was reverted to cotton use a few years later.
To further help farmers, he invented the Jessup wagon, a kind of mobile horse-drawn classroom and laboratory used to demonstrate soil chemistry. But the method had an unintended consequence: A surplus of peanuts and other non-cotton products. Carver set to work on finding alternative uses for these products.
For example, he invented numerous products from sweet potatoes, including edible products like flour and vinegar and non-food items such as stains, dyes, paints and writing ink. In all, he developed more than food, industrial and commercial products from peanuts, including milk, Worcestershire sauce, punches, cooking oils and salad oil, paper, cosmetics, soaps and wood stains.
He also experimented with peanut-based medicines, such as antiseptics, laxatives and goiter medications. It should be noted, however, that many of these suggestions or discoveries remained curiosities and did not find widespread applications.
When receiving formal appointments, Washington made sure to conduct himself in a very disciplined and decorous way. He also utilized informal power to cement his leadership. These powers included knowledge power and a strength of character that showed him to be a man of great integrity and of unswerving bravery.
Abraham Lincoln is often considered the greatest president for his leadership during the American Civil War and his eloquence in speeches such as the Gettysburg Address. The list below represents some of the major things Washington did first as president that established a precedent for future leaders of the position. Here are 10 characteristics and traits that distinguishes a servant leader from the more traditional ones.
Jesus is the ultimate leader in that He is God come in the flesh. Therefore , we can learn from Him, and though He is omniscient, He has chosen to teach and model certain ways of living. Before long, Carver became well known as a leading agricultural scientist.
In April , Carver received a letter from Booker T. The last from the position you now occupy you will no doubt achieve. These things I now ask you to give up. I offer you in their place: work — hard work, the task of bringing people from degradation, poverty and waste to full manhood.
Your department exists only on paper and your laboratory will have to be in your head. It was an offer that George Carver accepted immediately and the place where he worked for the remainder of his life. Carver was determined to use his knowledge to help poor farmers of the rural South. He began by introducing the idea of crop rotation. In the Tuskegee experimental fields, Carver settled on peanuts because it was a simple crop to grow and had excellent nitrogen fixating properties to improve soil depleted by growing cotton.
He took his lessons to former slaves turned sharecroppers by inventing the Jessup Wagon, a horse-drawn classroom and laboratory for demonstrating soil chemistry. Carver heard the complaints and retired to his laboratory for a solid week, during which he developed several new products that could be produced from peanuts. When he introduced these products to the public in a series of simple brochures, the market for peanuts skyrocketed. Today, Carver is credited with saving the agricultural economy of the rural South.
From his work at Tuskegee, Carver developed approximately products made from peanuts; these included: flour, paste, insulation, paper, wall board, wood stains, soap, shaving cream and skin lotion. He experimented with medicines made from peanuts, which included antiseptics, laxatives and a treatment for goiter.
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