A Chinese proverb says, "Great souls have wills; feeble ones have only wishes." One great soul, George Washington Carver said, ". . . It has always been the one great ideal of my life . . . to be of the greatest good to the greatest number of my people."
Carver was born of slave parents in the 1860's on a plantation in Missouri. Carver taught himself to read. Although he won a scholarship to attend Highland University, when he showed up for school, Highland refused Carver admission because he was black. This set-back did not stop Carver from furthering his educating.
Another black man, Booker Taliaferro Washington, saw the bounteous ability in Carver who had been doing research at Iowa Agricultural College after 1891.
Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, sent Carver a letter in 1896 asking Carver to work at the Tuskegee Institute as the head of its Agriculture Department. Susan Altman writes in her book, Extraordinary Black Americans From Colonial To Contemporary Times, "At Tuskegee, Carver developed a system of crop rotation. He planted a legume crop (such as peanuts, which replenish minerals in the soil) one year, followed by a crop of cotton the next year. Its purpose was to keep the soil rich and improve the harvest. This system became so successful that an oversupply of peanuts resulted. Carver responded by coming up with more than two dozen uses for them. Soon, farmers were making more money raising peanuts than harvesting cotton."
"Whatever you are, be a good one," said former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, encouraging border states to outlaw slavery, helped push through Congress the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which finally freed all the slaves nationwide in December 1865, led the United States through the American Civil War preserving the Union and battled periods of depression. In addition to his crop-rotation system Carver invented more than 300 products from the peanut and more than 100 products from the sweet potato.
Carver received job offers from famous and accomplished people like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford says Altman. Carver rejected these offers. Some may have told Carver something like, "Estas loco!" (You are crazy!)."
Money was not the primary motivator of Carver's life. Carver is a Christian who was committed to God and the advancement of people, especially African Americans.
Carver worked 47 years for Washington, who was freed from African-American slavery as a boy and rose to becoming an educator, speaker, author and to the top of African-American leadership during Jim Crow segregation.
"Since new developments are the products of a creative mind, we must therefore stimulate and encourage that type of mind in every way possible," said Carver.
"The mind of the prudent is ever getting knowledge, and the ear of the wise is ever seeking (inquiring for and craving) knowledge," says Proverbs 18:15 Amplified Bible.
Carver prized and practiced seeking and sharing education all his life. God makes each person unique. Everyone has something to share. Romans 12:13 Complete Jewish Bible says, "Share what you have with God’s people, and practice hospitality."
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