George Washington Carver was an African-American inventor and botanist born during the last years of slavery in 1864. George found his way to Simpson College and later Iowa State College to study agriculture. He earned his Masters in botany and taught at Iowa State before being invited by Booker T. Washington to head the agriculture department at the Tuskegee Institute. Perhaps most famous for his extensive work with peanuts, he discovered peanut crops were beneficial in restoring soil and identified crop rotation using sweet potatoes and peanuts as a method to prevent soil depletion from the over-planting of cotton. During his career, he invented 285 uses for the peanut including peanut milk, paper, and soap, and encouraged farmers to plant peanut crops so they would have their own food source, income streams, and healthier soil. He received honors from the NAACP and both Simpson College and Selma University awarded him honorary doctorates. Congress dubbed him The Peanut Man” and Time magazine named him the "Black Leonardo”. While George never married, he was often seen arm-in-arm with his long-time colleague and roommate scientist Austin W Curtis. Jr. George bequeathed all of his assets to Curtis upon his death in 1943. #LGBTQHistory #QTPOCHistory #GeorgeWashingtonCarver #Intersectionality
Commenti