George Washington Carver's Uses For Peanuts, Sweet Potatoes

George Washington Carver was born into slavery January of 1860 on the Moses Carver plantation in Diamond Grove, Missouri. He spent the first year of his life, the brutal days of border war, between Missouri and neighboring Kansas. George was a very sickly child with a whooping cough, which later lead to his speech impediment, and he was tiny and puny. George's father, James Carver, died in a wood hauling accident when he was bringing wood to his master's house one day. George was sick a great deal during his early years. In 1861, when George was one year old, raiders kidnapped him and his mother with horses from their home in Missouri. Moses Carver, Mary's master, heard that a bushwhacker named Bentley knew Mary's whereabouts along with

of cereal grains is since there weren't any other foodstuff to makes soup they were able to make a thick porridge or a thin broth or gruel. This discovery led to the creation of tools and techniques to collect, process, and store grain. (pg.11-12)

As well as creating the Farmers’ Institute, Carver also helped the farmers of Alabama and the southern states a great deal. An insect called the boll weevil became an enormous threat to the cotton fields of southern United States. Carver recommended to these farmers that they should substitute their cotton crops with sweet potatoes and, the more successful recommendation, peanuts. This switch would provide farmers another source of income and would also help to prevent the spread of the insect. The one problem with this solution was that no one knew what to do with all the peanut crops. Carver was quoted as saying: “we can learn to synthesize materials for every human need from the things that grow.” So that is what he did. In total, Carver was able to create close to three hundred different products from the peanut plant. These wide variety of products include dyes, ink, insulation, cosmetics, stock feed, medicines, glue, soap, and peanut milk. Although most of his products never became commercially sold, Carver became widely known as the “Peanut Man”. He also created nearly one hundred uses for the sweet potato crops.

Nelson used a product that allowed him to control when the freeze came, which was needed before the cotton could be picked. Scientific research developed a chemical product that had the same effect on cotton plants as a freeze would, allowing Nelson to pick the cotton when he wanted, instead of waiting for mother nature to cooperate.

George Washington Carver, one of the many geniuses in the field of agriculture, had a huge impact on America. Carver discovered many uses for peanuts and other common crops. His discoveries benefitted the soil and helped sustain the farmers in the South. Carver became an important figure during the age of industry. George W. Carver was a famous chemist who used his agricultural discoveries and inventions to contribute to education in the South.

Once in awhile, you may eat Peanut butter and jelly or use almond lotion on your skin. But do you know the history of it? George Washington Carver had filled a big gap in your everyday life using crops and other renewable resources. It took hard work and dedication to achieve goals like making building materials out of peanuts. Still today he is remembered and thought as a hard core thinker. The Ib learner profile trait for George is Washington carver was a born into slavery in 1861. He was kidnapped before 1 but his mother had made a successful escape taking young Carver with her. George Washington was a hard worker growing up, trying to make money anyway possible for his only-mother and brother to survive. He was known to have the green thumb in his childhood, because he could help and cure just about any plant that had trouble or that was on it’s last stem.

(digitalcollections.lib.iastate.edu) Carver worked on improving soils, growing crops with low inputs, and using species that fixed nitrogen (hence, the work on the cowpea and the peanut). Carver wrote in The Need of Scientific Agriculture in the South: "The virgin fertility of our soils and the vast amount of unskilled labor have been more of a curse than a blessing to agriculture. This exhaustive system for cultivation, the destruction of forest, the rapid and almost constant decomposition of organic matter, have made our agricultural problem one requiring more brains than of the North, East or West." George Washington Carver. This mean’t that the the food varieties he was creating needed more than just him.

In 1793 the cotton industry bloomed because of Eli Whitney when he invented the cotton gin. With the invention of the cotton gin, cotton became a tremendously profitable industry, creating many fortunes for white plantation owners in the antebellum South. “American inventor Eli Whitney and his cotton gin improved the cleaning of raw cotton, facilitating the continuing growth of the industry in many locales.” This proves that the cotton industry rose after the gin was invented. It is evident that Eli Whitney played a major part of the growth of the cotton industry. Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin revolutionized the cotton industry.

Agriculture to Washington was one of the soul ideas of his “racial uplift” concept. He used his politician like qualities to find favor with whites in both the South and the North. He convinced southern opponents and politicians that the Tuskegee Institute offered education that would keep “African American’s down on the farm.” To the northerners he promised the teaching of an immigrant work ethic concept, while promising African American’s in the South that vocation education would give the skill sets to own land, businesses and economic freedom. His ideology was for long term progression to equality. He epitomized the “work

On the day March, 11, 1941, the George Washington Carver Museum was dedicated to at the Tuskegee Institute with the participation of people such as Henry Ford. the museum is now part of the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site. George Carver was a famous agricultural scientist who was famous for using soy beans, peanuts, and sweet

With the economic system, the south had a very hard time producing their main source “cotton and tobacco”. “Cotton became commercially significant in the 1790’s after the invention of a new cotton gin by Eli Whitney. (PG 314)” Let

At Tuskegee University, which he founded, he pushed for students to learn tangible crafts, such as industrial and farming skills. He wanted his students to acquire the virtues of perseverance, innovativeness, and frugality so that they could grow as individuals and realize their self-worth. Essentially, these virtues, in addition to economic prosperity, proved to white people in the south that blacks could be valuable members of society.

     Before the invention of the cotton gin, Americans would remove cottonseed by hand. Slaves were hired to complete this procedure. This would take a very long time and something had to be done. Later on, a man named Eli Whitney invented a device called the cotton gin. The cotton gin is a machine for removing the seeds from cotton fiber. His invention could produce up to fifty pounds of cotton each

One of the early colonists who grew hemp [ marijuana ] was George Washington. In his diary entry of August 7, 1765, Washington noted: ?begin to separate the Male from the Female hemp at Do- rather too late.? And two days later: ?Abt. 6 o?clock put some Hemp in river to rot-.? And in September of that year, our gentleman farmer chronicled: ?Began to pull Seed Hemp - but not sufficiently ripe.? (Sloman 21)

In South Carolina, indigo and rice were popular crops to be cultivated during the eighteenth century. Slaves would work laboriously cutting, preparing, and drying the indigo so that it could be used by other slaves to die cotton yarn, wool, and silk to produce denim jeans and other clothing items.