George Washington Carver

During the mid to latter part of the twentieth century in the US, you could rarely go to a city or county in the South that didn’t have a school named after George Washington Carver.

- Junious Ricardo Stanton

Even during the days of virulent racial oppression and caste, George Washington Carver was viewed as “a credit to his race” and a famous scientist who singlehandedly saved Southern agriculture. Today, many Black people and Euro-Americans don’t even know who George Washington Carver was. So as part of this year’s Black History articles, I will share a bit of Carver’s personal and professional history, genius, and accomplishments.

The exact date of George Washington Carver’s birth is not known. It is surmised that he was born between 1863 and 1865 in Diamond, Missouri, during the formal enslavement era. He was born into servitude into a large family. His parents were “owned” by a man named Moses Carver. His family was given the surname of the White man who owned them, Carver. Before he was born, George’s father died in an accident. As an infant, George suffered several traumatic experiences. When he was only a few days old, George, along with his mother and a sister, was kidnapped by raiders and transported to Kentucky. Only George was found and retrieved by an agent working on behalf of Moses Carver. This was the norm during enslavement; “owners” would pay “agents,” trackers aka slave catchers, to trail and retrieve their “property” as part of the federal government's Fugitive Slave Act.

When Carver was returned to Moses Carver’s farm, he had no parents. His father had died before George was born, and the trackers weren’t able to recapture his mother and sister, so George and another brother, James, were raised by Moses Carver and his wife Susan.