After slavery was abolished, Moses Carver and his wife, Susan, decided to keep George and his brother James as their own children, raising and educating the two boys. Susan Carver taught George to read and write, since no local school would accept black students at the time. There was a school for black children 10 miles south in Neosho, George decided to go there. When he reached the town, he found the school closed for the night. He slept in a nearby barn. The next morning he met a kind woman, Mariah Watkins, from whom he wished to rent a room. When he identified himself as "Carver's George," as he had done his whole life, she replied that from now on his name was "George Carver". She then told him "You must learn all you can, then go back out into the world and give your learning back to the people". This made a great impression on him. Carver attended a series of schools before receiving his diploma at Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas.
Accepted to Highland College in Highland, Kansas, Carver was denied admittance once college administrators learned of his race. Instead of attending classes, he homesteaded a claim, where he conducted biological experiments and compiled a geological collection. While interested in science, Carver was also interested in the arts. In 1890, he began studying art and music at Simpson College in Iowa, developing his painting and drawing skills through sketches of botanical samples. His obvious aptitude for drawing the natural world prompted a teacher to suggest that Carver enroll in the botany program at the Iowa State Agricultural College.
Carver moved to Ames and began his botanical studies the following year as the first black student at Iowa State. His Bachelor’s thesis was “Plants as Modified by Man”. Upon completion of his Bachelor of Science degree, Carver's professors Joseph Budd and Louis Pammel persuaded him to stay on for a master's degree. His graduate studies included intensive work in plant pathology at the Iowa Experiment Station. Carver established his reputation as a brilliant botanist and taught as the first black faculty member at Iowa State.
After graduating from Iowa State, Carver embarked on a career of teaching and research. Booker T. Washington, the principal of the African American Tuskegee Institute, hired Carver to run the school's agricultural department in 1896. Washington offered him a hefty salary and the two rooms on campus, while most faculty members lived with a roommate. Carver's special status stemmed from his accomplishments and reputation, as well as his degree from a prominent institution not normally open to black students.
Tuskegee's agricultural department achieved national prominence under Carver's leadership, with a curriculum and a faculty that he helped to shape. Areas of research and training included methods of crop rotation and the development of alternative cash crops for farmers in areas heavily planted with cotton. This work helped struggling sharecroppers in the South, many of them former slaves. The development of new crops and diversification of crop use helped to stabilize the livelihoods of these people.
The education of African American students at Tuskegee contributed directly to the effort of economic stabilization among blacks. In addition to formal education in a traditional classroom setting, Carver pioneered a mobile classroom to bring his lessons to farmers. The classroom was known as a "Jesup wagon," after Tuskegee donor Morris Ketchum Jesup.
Many of Carver’s early experiments focused on the development of new uses for crops such as peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans, and pecans. The hundreds of products he invented included plastics, paints, dyes, and gasoline. In 1920, Carver delivered a speech before the Peanut Growers Association, attesting to the wide potential of peanuts. The following year, he testified before Congress in support of a tariff on imported peanuts. With the help of Carver's testimony, Congress passed the tariff in 1922.
By the time of his testimony, Carver had achieved international fame in political and professional circles. President Theodore Roosevelt admired his work and sought his advice on agricultural matters in the United States. In 1916, he was made a member of the British Royal Society of Arts, a rare honor for an American. Carver also advised Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi on matters of agriculture and nutrition.
Carver promoted scientific causes for the remainder of his life. He wrote a syndicated newspaper column and toured the nation, speaking on the importance of agricultural innovation, the achievements at Tuskegee, and the possibilities for racial harmony in the United States. From 1923 to 1933, Carver toured white Southern colleges for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. The organization worked to oppose lynching, mob violence, and peonage and to educate white southerners concerning the worst aspects of racial abuse.
Carver established a museum devoted to his work, including some of his own paintings and drawings. In December 1947, a fire broke out in the museum, destroying much of the collection. One of the surviving works by Carver is a painting of a yucca and a cactus, displayed at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. In addition to the museum, Carver also established the George Washington Carver Foundation at Tuskegee, with the aim of supporting future agricultural research.
Prior to Carver’s death, Harry S. Truman, then a senator from Missouri, sponsored a bill in favor of a monument honoring Carver during World War II. Supporters of the bill argued that the wartime expenditure was warranted because the monument would promote patriotic fervor among African Americans and encourage them to enlist in the military. The bill passed unanimously in both houses. In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated $30,000 for the monument west of Diamond, Missouri, the site of the plantation where Carver lived as a child. This was the first national monument dedicated to an African American and the first to a non-president. The 210-acre complex includes a statue of Carver as well as a nature trail, museum and cemetery.
George Washington Carver died on January 5, 1943, at the age of 78. He took a bad fall down a flight of stairs at his home. He was found unconscious by a maid who took him to a hospital but died from complications resulting from the fall. He was buried next to Booker T. Washington on the Tuskegee grounds. His life saving totaled $60,000, all of which he donated in his last years. On Carver's tombstone it was written: "He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world."
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