I have some seeds being delivered tomorrow and the soil is
here but looking at the National Weather Service forecast for this month and beyond
it looks like it may be a late spring. This artic oscillation thing seems like
it is going to hang on. So, I am in no rush to get started planting.
Normally mid-February I start looking for snowdrops to
bloom. Not this month. Maybe later this month but I doubt it, looking at the
weather ahead. Some of you gardeners don’t mind working outside in bitter cold,
but I do. You could be pruning trees if you are the hardy type. Some of you in
warmer climates may be thinking about outside gardening but this year the cold
is going to run deep into the south so be careful with what you plant early
this year.
So, if you can’t garden outside, you have time to learn
about gardening or plants in general. I’m reading a new book about our
agriculture changed human destiny, called “Plant, Animal, Junk, a History of
Food from Sustainable to Suicidal”.
I’ll write about it when I’m done. I’m also doing research on various topics
that strike my interest.
I wasn’t thinking about black history month when I came
across some information about peanuts that interested me. That information led
to reading several new articles with a different perspective on the man George
Washington Carver. I decide I would do something different this month and write
about a man who was truly a plant lover. He was also a black man, so it seems
appropriate to write about him during black history month.
So this week I am going to share with you some of what I
learned about the “Peanut Man”. It’s a
long article but I hope you find it interesting. Next week I’ll be back to
writing about garden subjects.
The Plant Doctor- George Washington Carver
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| George Washington Carver |
In my school days when we were taught anything about black history it was usually a story about George Washington Carver, the man who invented peanut butter and a hundred other uses for peanuts. It wasn’t until much later in life that I learned that Carver did not invent peanut butter and that his life and influence on agriculture and horticulture went far beyond his experiments with peanuts.
George Washington Carver would be right at home in todays
horticultural scene. He was a researcher of soil science and believed in the importance of
maintaining soil health. He was a strong believer in self-sufficiency, that
people needed to grow their own food and learn to eat in a healthy way. He was
also a strong believer in recycling and finding uses for waste products.
Carver ate “the weeds” and encouraged others to do so. He
experimented with herbal remedies. He believed in preserving nature and thought
that children should be taught about nature and growing things in school.
Carver was interested in plants of every type, not just crop
plants. He collected plants from an early age and seemed to be able to grow
just about any plant. As a boy he became
known as the “plant doctor” and people would bring plants to him to save. As a
requirement of his employment at Tuskegee Institute (now University) he asked
for a second room for his plants, most teachers got a single boarding room as
part of their employment.
A film from just before his death in 1943 shows him
demonstrating how he was crossing amaryllis with various lilies in search of
interesting hybrids. (There’s a link to this video at the bottom of the
article.) Carver maintained a large collection of amaryllis species. He had
extensive flower gardens and was known for wearing flowers in his lapel. Carver
was also an artist and painted lovely, detailed pictures of all kinds of
plants.
Carver did do extensive work with growing and using peanuts
and sweet potatoes. But the reason for this work was not what it seems on the
surface and was never for profit or fame. New research into his life and a less
fable like presentation of his motives and achievements are now changing the
way people think about George Carver.
George Carvers early life greatly influenced the man he
became. He was born a slave in 1864, the year before slavery was abolished in
Missouri (1865), the exact date is unknown. Moses and Susan Carver, who were
German immigrants, were his owners. They had purchased his parents, Mary and
Giles in 1855 to help on their farm in Diamond, Missouri.
Carvers father died in a farming accident shortly before he
was born. A week after he was born slave traders from Arkansas raided the farm
and stole his mother, his sister and him. His older brother James managed to
escape. Moses Carver sent a friend to
hunt for the family, but the man was only able to locate the infant George. He
traded a fine horse to get the boy back as the story goes.
Infant George and his brother James, now orphans, were then
taken in by Susan Carver and raised as her own children. Little is said about
this, I couldn’t find out if Susan had children of her own, or if the couple
was childless. But she seemed to take a motherly interest in the boys, teaching
them to read and write. George was a sickly child, maybe because of his early trauma,
and suffered from croup and pneumonia frequently. Susan was his nurse and was told
he wouldn’t make it to 21.
James began to work with Moses around the farm, but George
was left home with Susan. She taught him to sew, crochet and knit, how to cook
and prepare herbal remedies. He also had time to roam in the woods and tend to
his own plants. Later in life he spoke of this time;
“Day after day I spent in the woods alone in order to
collect my floral beauties and put them in my little garden…,strange to say all
sorts of vegetation seemed to thrive under my touch until I was styled the
plant doctor, and plants from all over the county would be brought to me for
treatment.”
Carvers voice was high and childlike his entire life and he
never married. He had mentioned to friends that an early incident left him
unable to have children. (He was able to grow a moustache though.) At his death
the undertaker found a lot of scar tissue where his testicles should have been.
A book African-American Perspectives on Biomedical Ethics (1992) claims
that Carver was castrated at age 11 by a doctor at the request of his master.
Whether this is true or not remains a question.
Some black people are upset about this discovery and claim
that he was cruelly castrated so he could be a house slave and not bother the
master’s daughter. This is speculation. Carter may have lost his testicles due
to injury or disease at an early age. He
may even have been abused when he was kidnapped as an infant or injured. Maybe
a doctor told the Carvers it would help with his many illnesses, medicine had
odd theories back then. Or maybe the Carvers did want him emasculated. We just
don’t know.
We don’t know what Georges relationship with the Carvers was like exactly, but he had fond memories of them, spoke well of them, and would travel to visit them several times before their deaths. Moses Carver was not Georges master at age 11 as slavery was abolished by then. And Carver, in his own recounting, left home at 10 and before that seems to have been treated like an adopted son.
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| Carver working in one of his plant "labs" |
Education
When George was about 10, he decided he wanted to go to
school. His foster mother agreed he should try. The only Negro school was 10
miles away, in Neosho. A kindly black couple took him in and
allowed him to live there in exchange for household help. Mariah Watkins, his
new foster parent, was a nurse and
midwife with a broad knowledge of herbal remedies. She encouraged George to get
all the schooling he could, taught him a lot about healing herbs, and also
introduced him to religion.
Several other people fostered George as he traveled around
to complete his early education. He graduated from high school in Minneapolis,
Kansas. After that, in 1886, he
homesteaded a claim in Kansas, where he established a nursery of sorts,
planting fruit trees, shrubs, ornamental plants and garden produce that he
sold. He also worked a variety of other jobs.
A few years later he became friends with a white couple, the
Milhollands, who were impressed with his knowledge and urged him to enroll in a
college in Iowa, Simpson College, a Methodist school that allowed black
students to enroll.
Carver studied art and piano there. His beautiful paintings of plants led his art teacher to suggest he go to a college where he could study botany. She suggested Carver go to Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University). After applying to other colleges which rejected him because he was black, and a few years working to save money, Carver managed to get into Iowa State in 1891. He was the first black student to attend the college.
Carvers work
At Iowa State Carver earned a masters degree and went on to
work in the Iowa Experimental station in the area of soil/ plant pathology and mycology.
He gained some recognition in the scientific world for his achievements there.
He also began teaching and was the first black faculty member of Iowa State.
In the meantime, another well-known black man, Booker T. Washington,
had helped establish the first land grant college intended to teach black
students about agriculture and help black farmers in the region, Tuskegee Institute,
(now University) in Alabama. In 1896 he
succeeded in luring Carver to head the agriculture department there.
Carver took a pay cut when he went to work there. And since
Tuskegee was not as well funded as some other land grant colleges facility were
also assigned other jobs. Besides teaching and research Carver was expected to manage
two farms the college owned and also tend to any plumbing problems the college
had. Carver was not happy about this.
Booker and Carver had an uneasy relationship. Carver
actually adopted the middle name Washington in respect for Washington. But
although Carver was a hard worker, he greatly resented some of his duties and
many complaints are recorded from him to Washington. He threatened to resign
many times.
Carver wanted to concentrate on research and detested all the recordkeeping required by the college. (Modern Extension educators can sympathize with that.) But he and Washington always managed to work something out. Eventually as the school grew and prospered Carver was left to do more of the research work he thrived on and no longer had to fix the plumbing.
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| A war poster |
Carver’s mission was to improve farmers lives
When Carver moved to Alabama he was shocked at the
conditions black farmers faced. The soil was worn out and depleted, there were
vast areas of eroded land. Most black people didn’t have money to buy land,
they were sharecroppers on land rented to them by white people. The white landowners
told them what crops they could grow on the land and what price they would get
for those crops- and the landowners rent was the first thing deducted from any
money received.
As a result, black farmers lived in debt and abject
poverty. They were often hungry and malnourished
as most no longer grew food for their own use. Cotton was the crop they grew,
often up to their doorstep. They were unable to afford chemical fertilizers and
pesticides like white farmers and their crops were poor.
Carver set out to find ways to improve the depleted soil in
a way that black people could manage without much cash input. He built a wagon
that he hauled around the county to instruct farmers about cover crops,
compost, crop rotation, and other things they could do to improve the soil. He
encouraged farmers to start growing their own food again and become self-sufficient.
He even taught them to eat the weeds!
Carvers research on crops that could improve the soil led
him to the peanuts he is so famous for. Peanuts are able to pull nitrogen from
the air and return it to the soil. They grew in the depleted soil and after a
crop of peanuts a crop of cotton would have a greatly improved yield and
quality. In Alabama a crop of peanuts and a crop of cotton could be achieved in
the same year. And a crop of peanuts could be eaten by the farmers or sold to
others to eat.
This is why Carver developed his pamphlet with some 105 uses
for peanuts. He wanted to encourage people to buy peanuts and drive up the
demand for them. He wanted farmers to use the crop they grew in diverse ways
and find new uses and markets for them. He hoped to lift black farmers out of poverty.
Peanut butter was not Carters invention and he never claimed
it as such. There was a patent for peanut butter registered 12 years before
Carter compiled his list. He made no secret of the fact that he used some 20
sources to compile uses for the nuts, although he did develop many uses for
peanuts. Many of the uses he developed were for waste products, like hulls or
for cosmetic and medicinal preparations.
The pamphlet, or bulletin as Extensions handouts were called,
was actually the last of 44 bulletins Carver published. His bulletins covered a
wide range of subjects from feeding acorns to livestock, cotton diseases and
problems, 5 bulletins on sweet potatoes, hog raising, ornamental plants,
tomatoes, and nature study to name a few subjects.
It’s important to stress that peanuts were not the only thing Carver did research on or promoted. He did a lot of work on improving sweet potatoes and making them a valuable crop. He worked on cotton research, cowpeas, herbs, vegetables and ornamental plants as well as other crops.
The peanut man
Carvers fame as the peanut man probably came from the notoriety
he gained when he testified before the Ways and Means committee of Congress on
the behalf of peanut farmers in 1921. Peanut growers wanted Congress to put
tariffs on peanuts from China, (sound familiar?) because it was undercutting
their prices. They needed Carver to make the case that peanuts were an
important crop that needed protection.
And he did. When the slight, rather shabbily dressed, (Carver
cared little about fine clothing although he could afford it), black man
entered Congress jokes and racial slurs could be heard around the hall. It was
unusual for a black person to address Congress.
But when Carver opened his mouth and began to speak about the importance
of peanuts and their value as a crop in his soft voice, they were mesmerized. They
kept him there asking questions long after the allotted time. Reporters wrote
about the event in glowing terms and Carvers fame as the peanut man was made.
In World War 1 Carver was asked by the War Department to
work with Henry Ford to develop a substitute for rubber. He and Ford became
friends, Ford visited him several times after the war effort was over. Ford would eagerly eat the weed sandwiches Carver
would make for him and enjoyed discussing inventions with him. (Carver did develop a rubber substitute from
peanut oil but it was never used.)
Carver was said to be a kind man who never spoke badly about
anyone. He was very religious and gave his students moral guidelines to follow
as well as practical ones. His students liked him, although one did complain to
a reporter about the weed sandwiches they were asked to eat.
While Carver filed 4 patents from his inventions, he never
made money from them and was not a man whose work was based on monetary gain.
He was modest about his popularity and rarely sought credit or fame. He lived a
modest life among his beloved plants.
Carver was frugal though. He managed to save enough money to
establish the George Washington Carver Foundation at Tuskegee in 1938, with the equivalent
of over a million dollars in todays money value. The Foundation carried on the
agricultural research that Carver loved.
On January 5, 1943, at the age of 78, Carver died several
days after a fall at his home. Carver worked at Tuskegee until his death and
was buried there, next to Booker T Washington.
More reading
https://www.tuskegee.edu/support-tu/george-washington-carver/carver-peanut-products
Other reading
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/search-george-washington-carvers-true-legacy-180971538/
https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/george-washington-carvers-legacy-went-beyond-peanuts
An early film about Carver, at the very end you hear a
recording of his voice.
“Wherever soil is wasted, the people are wasted. A poor
soil produces only a poor people.”
-George Washington Carver
Kim Willis
All parts of this blog are
copyrighted and may not be used without permission.
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