[Music] you [Music] Thank You mrs. Walker we appreciate that ministry of music here tonight it was back several years ago while attending a National Religious broadcasters convention I saw a fella running around very rapidly he had a big satchel and and the papers flowing out and it was really thick because he had lots of thick books inside and they introduced himself as Bill Federer and he is the compiler of America's guiding country encyclopedia of quotations and he was saying I mean it the information was just flowing from him I mean it did you know this about George Washington Abraham Lincoln did it and did you know this Constitution this date and on and on he was going to thanks for the book well we took the book back and as we look through this we thought wow this is really a masterpiece of things have been put together and so how we introduced a bill to our crosstalk audience invited him to come on and and many people found great value in the work that he has compiled the many many hours of research that has gone into the the works that he's involved in I know also then he put more effort into putting it onto a cd-rom along with many other resources and and then he's branched out he's worked with groups like mat Staver at Liberty Council to to research matters pertaining to the ten commandments and to look at the influence of the Ten Commandments upon our nation's founding and how they have have been inter woven throughout the very founding of our nation and even to this day whenever I call up Bill for just a brief moment the information just continues to flow outside of him and before we hang up he tells me something new that he's learned pretending to either our founders or something great in history but we also learned that Bill was putting out a brand-new book and it was dealing with George Washington Carver and as we saw that we said would it be great to have him come and do a special emphasis here in Black History Month dealing with black Americans who've influenced our nation toward God toward Christ and toward biblical values and we invited him up and he's put together a presentation just specifically for this occasion no doubt he'll be able to use it now in other places as well and he was going to be highlighting several black Americans and highlighting George Washington Carver particular but we appreciate the work that you've done bill and in putting together all the many hours of research and your dedication bill is also one who doesn't just you know write about these things this man has run for Congress against Dick Gephardt in the 2000 election and there was a lot of shenanigans that went on in that race but I know he's really seeking the Lord's will even about what the Lord would have him do in the future but we counted a privilege to have him as our friend and to have him here at the Waukesha Expo let's welcome Bill Federer here tonight for the special rally presentation [Applause] I think I'm on well it's great to be here Jim thank you so much for that introduction and first of all I would like to say how much I respect Vik Eliason and vcy America and the tremendous work that they are doing not just here in Milwaukee but across America and you get the blessing of being right here so god bless you Vic and all of the vcy America family well I have to say that it was such a tremendous inspiration for me to study the great black men and women throughout our history and how they impacted and I knew a lot already before I started studying but to tell the truth I was touched in my heart and when I read the stories of black men and women and those trials that they went through and the horrors of slavery I brought tears to my eyes and I think that God wants to do a healing in our nation and it first has to start with knowledge we have to know the truth we have to know the past and believe me the stories are so inspirational they cross all racial barriers and Jesus Christ is exalted through them well I have a computer here that I may need a little help to get this all up and running and it has the pictures of some of the great people that influenced our country and if somebody knows a little bit more about this I have it on my screen here but oh there you go okay Wow I wrote a book on George Washington Carver I'm gonna give a little introduction then I'm gonna talk about some other people that I'm going to come back to him my mom grew up in Neosho Missouri which is eight miles away from Diamond Grove Missouri where George Washington Carver was raised in 1855 my great-great grandfather of his name was George Washington Epperson moved from Tennessee to Marion County Illinois to McDonald County in Missouri which is where Neosho and Diamond Grove was and so we have roots there where ever since I was a boy growing up we would go to the George Washington Carver Memorial and we would tour and walk the little trail through the woods and see the old place where the cabin was were they built a replica and and just be touched in our heart it just became part of my childhood and the first book that my grandparents ever gave me was a book on George Washington Carver and I remember reading through it you know it had the big letters so it was you know easy for me to read and and I remember being touched and he even even brought to tears when he would go through the different different trials and it was you know years later that I realized that there was a difference in colors and it's like you know what somebody's into your heart it doesn't matter and I think that forever thankful to my grandparents who have gone on to be with the Lord for giving me that book and I wrote this book by going down to Tuskegee and going to Diamond Grove Missouri and reading through the letters that Carver wrote throughout his life you know you always see stuff where here's a great african-american scientist he did great things with the peanut now let's move on to somebody else well I wanted to dwell on him a little bit and read through his memoirs and read through his personal correspondence and it is absolutely tremendous and so we're gonna get into that in a little bit but I wanted to start off with some other great people and this is dr. ben Carson now dr. ben Carson is the head of Neurological Surgery at John Hopkins University this is one of the most prestigious positions in the entire medical field and he started off in Detroit grew up his mother was one of 24 children and she was married when she was 13 and had two children and later found out that the husband had another wife across town and so she divorced him and so she had their two child that she was raising on her own and she would work all kinds of hours and not have time and they'd end up watching television and they would get into trouble and so Ben had a terrible temper and would go to school and didn't know any of the answers and by fifth grade he had the reputation of being a dummy and the students one time I had an argument and he got into a fight because they were trying to decide if he was the dumbest kid in the class or the dumbest kid in the world isn't that terrible so the so his mom Sonia decided that no more TV and so when they would come home from school she would walk him the seven blocks to the public library and she would have him read books and write a book report for her and at first Ben thought this was child abuse and finally he started liking it in the one of the corners were turned when he was in class one day and the teacher held up a rock and said does anybody know what kind of rock this is and nobody knew and he looked at it he said it's obsidian and all the other kids in the class look at him and he wasn't called dummy after that anymore and he began to do book reports for his mom now years later he realized that his mom couldn't even read and she was having him do this and they'd hand in the book report she'd look at it but she thinks she couldn't even read it now she sense has gone on and she's got her college degree but this is the background that he that he was in know the lord was somebody that was very important in his life he said several things when studies overwhelmed Ben and his brother Sonia the mother would say you weren't born to be a failure you can do it you just asked the Lord and he will help you at age eight Ben had a missionary speak at heard a missionary speaking Church and Ben made up his mind that he wanted to be a missionary doctor his mother's reaction was well Benny you will be a doctor becoming a doctor would demand a fine education which Sonia didn't find in the local schools it didn't matter if the children weren't made to learn their multiplication tables and schools she made them learn them at home and then she would have them walk to the library and two things were working in his favor one was his strong faith in God that continued to sustain him and the other was the mother who got involved in his life and believed in him mother who prayed for wisdom to go beyond her own third-grade education in order to instill in her son the enthusiasm for learning her prayers led her to plan - a plan that worked well he went on to go to high school he eventually earned a scholarship to Yale University went on to medical school at the University of Michigan by age 33 he had earned his current position as director of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins University and ladies and gentlemen he is the youngest man ever to hold this position extremely distinguished title he performs over 500 critical operations on children in dire need each year which is over triple the normal neurosurgeon and in 1987 dr. Carver dr. Carson did a brand-new world shaking surgery by separating two Siamese twins the bender twins who were joined at the head at the skull and they shared a vein that was a vital vein from bringing blood out of the brain and both of the Siamese twins had that same vein and all the doctors were saying well one of these is going to have to die well he spent five months planning the surgery it was a 22 hour surgery and guess what both of them survived and it made world news tremendous impact and this is what he said when asked how he stayed focused he said it's a matter of constantly being in the correct state of mind the first thing I do is pray then I read from the Bible the book of Proverbs which has an enormous amount of wisdom just give me wisdom to know what to do and what not to do States the humble physician dr. Carson shares his wisdom in several outstanding books one is gifted hands and another is think big and he's the recipient of 21 honorary doctorates 21 honorary doctorates and he's been written up in Parade magazine reader Digest New York Times Fortune magazine and he's right there in Baltimore Maryland and his book think big the title of it to think stands for tea talent h honesty high insight n nice k knowledgeable b books i in-depth learning and g-god ladies and gentlemen this is a tremendous american a tremendous human being and an inspiration to each and every one of us and I want to thank God for dr. ben Carson now another one of my heroes is dr. Alan Keyes and dr. Alan Keyes was the ambassador to the UN for President Ronald Reagan he spent 11 years in the US State Department and we have colon Powell that's in there right now and Condoleezza Rice great african-american leaders but Alan Keyes served in the US Foreign Service and was the staff at the National Security Council I'll be book before becoming Ronald Reagan's ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council he represented Arab excuse me represented the interests of the United States in the UN General Assembly assembly from 1983 to 1985 and in 1985 he was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for international organizations he was the head of citizens against government waste and he was the founder of National Taxpayers Action Day he was the two-time Republican nominee for the United States Senate in the state of Maryland and he was the Republican presidential candidate now I was honored because I got in my speaking across the country people would organize events and they would have me speak and they would have allen key speak and i had the opportunity of introducing him several times and ladies and gentlemen I'm honored to speak before a Lemke speaks but I will never speak after he speaks because he is the most powerful captivating speaker since Frederick Douglas and after he's done the room gets quiet and everybody is so convicted and and you feel the presence of the Holy Spirit and dr. alan keyes got his doctorate from Harvard he wrote his dissertation on constitutional theory he is the intern president of the Alabama A&M University in 1991 he speaks French and Spanish and a little Russian and a little ancient Greek and is the author of masters of the dream the strength and betrayal of black America in 1995 and our character our future reclaiming America's moral destiny and he's unashamedly and consistently raises the standard of unalienable rights and biblical truth in defense of the unborn and for civil rights you know one of the things I love about dr. Carolyn Keyes is he has taken the Declaration apart and studied it backwards and forwards and the points in there's all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable all men are endowed by their creator with certain able rights the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that declaration goes on to mention God several more times it talks about laws of nature and of nature's God says relying on the protection of divine providence and with the firm reliance on the protection of divine providence and and the supreme ruler and it refers to God four times and here we are in a country where they're wanting to take God out of everything and you know I debated the head of the Council for secular humanism in the Newark New Jersey last year and he was trying to say our Constitution was a godless document because it did not invoke a deity and I said well you know it does they've done in the year of our Lord 1787 and it does honor the Christian Sabbath but more importantly it's based on this principle that John F Kennedy brought out John F Kennedy said the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God and so doctor Alan Keyes started a declaration nation and again I had the honor of being with him in several different events around the country and again the most inspiring godly Christian man who not only stands up for race for equality but stands up for God and the unborn which takes tremendous amount of courage another leader is Clarence Thomas now I want to read to you an article written by Paul Wyrick who's the head of free Congress Foundation and Paul rot what eirick writes this Clarence Thomas is slowly but surely becoming one of the most influential of the nine Juris on the US Supreme Court whose opinions today have so much to do with the conduct of our government as well as our daily lives no Supreme Court justice in history has had to endure the constant vilification which thomas has he has chosen to ignore what was said about him in favor of long hours and hard work on cases assigned to him he told me and this is to Paul Wyrick that his greatest satisfaction in being on the Supreme Court is the ability to eventually bring his colleagues around to a sound point of view by doing solid work every issue ever since he was confirmed in 1991 52 to 48 Clarence Thomas has been determined to outlive his critics not just by serving longer on the court but by becoming through solid historical work a respected force force nothing has shaken him from this goal and I thought this this last part here that I'm gonna read is very interesting he says some justices have their clerks do all the writing they merely outline their views and the clerks do the rest of the work in fact sometimes justices haven't even known which way they wanted to go on a case so they had their clerks prepare both sides of an opinion of an issue and then they choose the one that they won Clarence Thomas on the other hand doesn't let others do for him the most important work of the court he Labor's personally at writing the material himself what has become clear is that as a result of his Labor's the other justices now regard him as a keen intellect whose opinions have always backed by excellent research even when they disagree with Thomas they know that that he can back up his opinions with solid researchers now it is his critics who have begun to look foolish as Thomas is emerging as a powerful voice on the court his writings are stated so clearly that any citizen can understand them his logic is powerful his research impeccable now his influence with his colleagues is steadily increasing thomas is a model for anyone who has endured false criticism and demands the same sort of crowd in which in Christ's time shouted give us Barabbas even among those he considers close friends thomas never lets his critics frame how he looks on things he knows God and he lets God determine the framework for his overall thinking beyond that thomas sticks to the constitution the minds of those who framed it and he as he Labor's through the myriad of issues which those who wrote the constitution could ever have imagined he has every right to be bitter but he is anything but bitter the reason his critics get more angry is because it is beginning to dawn on them that they have no effect on Thomas let those who have to face viciousness in unfair attacks look to the example of Clarence Thomas he has taught us that even in a demented society steady solid hard work will eventually win recognition and respect and that's Supreme Court justice an African American Clarence Thomas another one of my heroes is JC Watts and I was just with him this past week and actually did a radio show with him we talked about George Washington Carver and he said you know bill I got a chance to meet one of the Carver boys see George Washington George Washington Carver disciples students and there was a group of them that he spent some extra time with and jcy said yeah I went to visit a mr. Grisham in Bethany Oklahoma he's 91 years old now and I got a chance to go over to his house and just to listen to him talk about dr. Carver and what a great Christian man he was but JC Watts was the University of Oklahoma star quarterback football player and he led his team to two Orange Bowl victories and was named the Orange Bowl Most Valuable Player and then he went to play professional football with the Canadian league and was named the Most Valuable Player up there then he became came back to Oklahoma and worked with his dad who was a pastor and he became a youth minister an ordained Christian minister and very effective and then he decides to run for Congress and in 1994 he gets elected to the United States Congress in a district that's 80% white he is so respected in Congress that he gets voted the House Conference chairman which is ladies and gentlemen the fourth most important position in our government the House Conference chairman is the one that in in the case of the Republicans the all the Republican congressman meet on a side room of the Capitol before they go out onto the main floor and they discuss what they're going to do and what their game plan is JC Watts chaired the committee he's the one that stood there and called okay you get to speak now and you get to speak now and you don't get to mean and and twice I was in that meeting and JC Watts called me up to the front and gave me the microphone and I got to speak to all the congressman Dennis Hastert Dick Armey Tom DeLay Tom Davis and he allowed me to be able to address the leadership of our country JC Watts is he came to st. Louis when I was running for office as Jim mentioned and spoke for me and just a great leader and ladies and gentlemen I think he just he taught he said bill when I ran for Congress I said that I was gonna run for three terms he said I ran for and he says I want to spend time with my family says my son's got his basketball season now and I got to drive him to the basketball games and and so he's back in Oklahoma and he just wrote a book and the title of the book is what color is a conservative brilliant book from a brilliant man and I think it's important that we as Americans and all Americans realize the contribution of men like JC Watts alan keyes Clarence Thomas and all the great leaders dr. ben Carson and I want to give JC a hand [Applause] and he's such a strong Christian now how many of you been down in Tuskegee well if you ever go down there they have the museum where they have dr. Carver's George Washington Carver's all of us there's mic microscopes and all of his things and inventions and plants and samples of foods and so forth but on the side there's a little theater and then the theater you get to watch a movie and it's the movie of the Tuskegee Airmen it's a very inspiring story of these pilots african-american pilots and the struggles they went through to become pilots and then in the war working through a military system that wasn't going to put them in a place where they could fight but they were all trained for it and then finally they got the open door and they got to go over to North Africa then they got to fly in Europe and they got a reputation of being the best of flying and being trustworthy and when the big bombers that were slow had to have planes accompany and defend them the Tuskegee Airmen were the ones that were requested to be the ones protecting the convoy of those airplanes Harriet Tubman now I felt it's important that we look at great african-american women as well Harriet Tubman was born in 1819 or 1820 we don't know because she was born a slave and they didn't keep the records man she was in Dorchester County Maryland and when she was 12 years old she was seriously injured by a blow to the head from an overseer because she refused to tie up a another slave who had attempted to escape you know they were terrible and justices that were done and it breaks my heart to see these that to read these stories of the injustice that were done well she was given a piece of paper by a white neighbor with two names on it and told how to find a house that she could escape to and she went to that house at the first house she was put into a wagon covered with a sack and driven to her next destination following this route to Pennsylvania she initially settled in Philadelphia where she met William still a Philadelphia Philadelphia station manager on the Underground Railroad with his assistants they formed the Philadelphia anti-slavery society and began working with the Underground Railroad in 1851 she began relocating members of her family to Ontario Canada and then innate in the operations until 1857 after freeing herself from slavery Harriet Tubman had the courage to go back into Maryland and into America and to rescue members of her family and she eventually conducted over 300 people to freedom 300 people to freedom and she risked her life because they had the the Democrats had just passed the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 and it was if you are caught harboring or a slave then you were punished and so they wanted to turn people in so she wasn't risking her life and the story says that she was pretty tough and she knew that if she was helping somebody to escape and they did they got afraid and went back that they could get forced to tell where the Underground Railroad was and they'd all get in trouble and so she told him you see he says if you're gonna come with me you have to be willing to not turn back or die and she told them he said if if we get halfway there and you decide to turn back and she she let him know pretty strong that she might be the one to shoot him you know so if they got four women with some backbone a great leader and she had a US postage stamp made with her image on him these are inspiring stories they happened right here in America another one is Sojourner Truth Sojourner Truth was born a slave and she was able to get free and when she did she prayed and went to the Lord and ask the Lord she said I didn't want to have any of Egypt on me and so not only did I leave all the trappings of Egypt behind but I left my name behind this is what she said when I left the house of bondage I left everything behind I wanted to keep nothing of Egypt on me so I went to the Lord and asked him to give me a new name I set up under a banner and then I sing and I tell the folks that come around to listen and then I tell them about Jesus she was a Christian a Christian woman that went around from upstate New York to she was born in 1797 she had four masters until the fourth of July 1827 when slavery was finally abolished in the state of New York was 1827 that New York ended slavery then she took the courageous court action of demanding the return of her youngest son Peter who had been illegally sold away from her to a slave owner in Alabama and she moved to New York City she was able to get her son back she was deeply religious and I loved it because every biographer you read on sojourner truth's she was so sold out to the Lord that even histories that are written that don't like to talk about religion they have to mention religion because she was so touched and so open about it she became a traveling preacher and she all the way from Long Island to Connecticut speaking to people on the countryside about her life and her relationship with God she was a powerful speaker and a powerful singer when she rose to speak wrote one observer her commanding figure and dignified manner hushed every trifle every trifler in the audience to silence audiences were melted into tears by her touching stories after several months of traveling truth was encouraged by friends to go to Northampton Association which had been founded in 1841 a cooperative community community dedicated to abolitionism and there she met and one of the thinkers William Lloyd Garrison and just last week I met a descendant of William Lloyd Garrison and was able to give him a copy of my book on George Washington Carver Sojourner Truth met President Lincoln in the White House and President Lincoln told her that he had heard her speeches long before so here was a woman who made an impact on the President of the United States and thank God for a woman filled with the Holy Ghost and being willing to stand up for truth and to risk her life to help free her brothers and sisters from slavery another one I want to talk about is is Richard Allen but I want it before I do that a little bit of history in 1619 the first dutch ship of carrying slaves came up the James River in Virginia 1619 well in Massachusetts that a slave trading ship tried to come up and the Puritans and the pilgrims were so upset at this they took the captain of the slave ship and threw him in jail and arrested him and they took the ship and they returned all the the slaves back to Africa and you begin to see that there is two different threads that run throughout the history of our country on the one side of abolition in 1732 Oglethorpe that founded Georgia in his original writings he forbad slavery in 1774 two of the colonies rejected slavery and then you see some interesting writings because some of the other colonies wrote laws to abolish slavery but King George the third vetoed them King George the third vite they wanted to get rid of slavery and King George the third veto them and that was one of the things that colonists were upset about that caused them to want to have the revolution against King George the third you see that there's underlying currents going on here so that the two colonies already backed away when Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence the first draft got rid of slavery it condemns King George the third for nineteen different things he takes taxation without representation you know he incites the natives of the frontiers to attack us and he imprisons people who have never offended him from a distant land and for them to serve in slavery and he and impedes every single chance to try to free them and that's listed by Thomas Jefferson is one of the reasons that we're rebelling against Britain well guess what a couple of the southern states said we're not going to sign the Declaration as long as that's in there and you and I wish that they would have had enough guts to stand their ground but unfortunately as much courage as they had they didn't and they backed away and they went ahead and let those states erase that line out of the Declaration and they came up with the Declaration we have now which didn't eliminate slavery well two of the signers of the Declaration of Independence Benjamin Rush who was who helped start the American Bible Society he helps found the first anti-slavery society and guess who was the first president of the first anti-slavery society Benjamin Franklin good old Ben Franklin I mean after he signed the Declaration after he signed the Constitution he dedicated the rest of his life to fighting slavery another one was Henry Lee Noah Webster fought slavery the guy that wrote Webster's dictionary and also Livingstone who signed the Constitution wanted to get rid of slavery then in 1783 they voted and they voted to eliminate slavery from America and it fell short by one vote isn't that a terrible one vote they fell short well in 1796 the different colonies had drawn their lines and but there was this territory out to the west so George Washington signed a law forbidding slavery in all the free territories in 1796 and George Washington wrote in his will that all of his slaves were freed upon the death of his wife now we wish he would have freed him right then and several did free him right then but he didn't have any kids to take care of his wife and he I guess he felt like he needed to do that but he did free one of his slaves right then who was his he says oh man William who was faithfully with me all his life and who leg got injured in something he says that he's free but he can stay here and if he does stay here Wilson will support him for the rest of his life and but that was George Washington then we sort of see the lines develop in the south the Democrat Party passed through the Missouri Compromise and the Missouri Compromise said that you know from now on with new states want to come into the Union we have to have a slave state come in the same time that a free state comes in see before them when they the guys that did the Declaration they felt well slavery is on its way out you know pretty soon it's just going to sort of die out but with that and then the Fugitive Slave Law then the Dred Scott case and the kansas-nebraska Act all the sudden they realized that wait a second those slave states want to grow and they're they want to have more and more slave states in this and that is when things begin to heat up and you read the speeches of Abraham Lincoln when he debated Stephen Douglas and you can see that Abraham Lincoln hated slavery you know some people say well you know he just declared the Emancipation Proclamation because of financial reasons or whatever will you read Lincoln's views he hated it even writing letters to Joshua speed a friend of his he says that trip we took down the Mississippi River and I saw those black men and women and change on the steamboat going down to New Orleans it says that that picture haunts my mind and when he debated Stephen Douglas Lincoln would get up there and condemn slavery and Stephen Douglas would get up and he says slavery is wrong slavery is terrible but it's a free country and everyone should have a free choice as to whether or not to own a slave and that terrible sounds like sort of a pro-choice argument we have today well in 1856 back then there were two parties in America there was the Democrat Party that was South was pro-slavery and there was the Whigs whi GS and the Whigs wanted to be the big tent party so they they didn't they were sort of wishy-washy they weren't Ford they weren't against it they started wanting to hold the Union together but people started getting fed up with the Whigs and so in 1856 a new party was started called the Republican Party and the original platform of the Republican Party said we want to eliminate the two relics of barbarism polygamy and slavery and every single plank of the Republican Party sense has been to eliminate slavery and indeed when the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the south some people question well is that really legal for the president to just signs it's a little bill and make a law and so they passed the Thirteenth Amendment and out of all of the amendments the Thirteenth Amendment is the only one signed by a president it's signed by Abraham Lincoln it would have gone into law without his signature he didn't have to sign it but he signed it to show that he is so enthusiastic about freeing the slaves and prohibiting slavery in all the states of all the republican congressmen and senators that voted 100 percent of the Republicans voted for the 13th and the 14th and the 15th amendments very few Democrats voted for it and that's just history that's just a historical record we are we you and I no matter which color we are we've inherited this country what are we going to do with it well I'll tell you what it's always a story of one or two people with courage that are willing to stand up and make a difference isn't that the way the Bible is I mean God told Gideon Gideon you got thirty thousand men against 300 thousand you got too many tell the ones that are afraid to go home so it whittles down to 3,000 minutes and god says getting that's still too many men and get he's like three thousand against three hundred thousand it's still too many goes yes and so he said tell him to go down by the creek and drink water and the rules that bring it up to his mouth you know keep and then those that put their head in the water but a little bit you know get it on the goal anyway so it wills down to 300 you know a little David against this nine-foot Goliath Moses backed up against the Red Sea and Pharaoh charging in with these chariots going 30 miles an hour you know God somehow seems to always wait till something looks hopeless and he finds a couple men and women with courage against all odds that our will to stand up and say Lord used me to make a difference and I believe that these men and women that we're talking about throughout history our great african-american leaders in the past their inspirations to you and I today to say yes there's problems in America and there's problems in the world but they're overwhelming no they're not overwhelming you know I'll just share something with you if everything was perfect and you lived your life and died and went to heaven and you run into Moses and David and Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman and these great leaders up there and you say tell us the story again you know what was it like you know the the Underground Railroad and risking your life and what was it like you know fighting Pharaon and they tell us these great inspiring stories and then they say you tell us what did you do in your life tell us and you would unity all everything everything was taken care of in my life I want anything to do I mean you're gonna have to carry that story around forever where you go in heaven you know no but guess what God gave us lots to do so when you get to heaven and people walk up to you and you're in the great assembly and they call you up on the stage and said it's your turn to tell what you did in your life and everybody's looking right at you you can say yes I was living in a time when there were problems when there were still prejudices in different areas and you know we talked about slavery there still is slavery going on in North Africa there are missionary societies that are buying the Christian boys and girls that are enslaved by the northern Muslim tribes and they're buying from the Muslims the Christians who have been enslaved they're buying their freedom that cost me about you know three thousand dollars to buy somebody talked to one organization that I heard that it was a hundred and seventy five dollars they could buy the freedom for a little young girl and what happens in Sudan today the northern Muslim Sudanese have killed over 2 million Christians in southern Sudan they have oil fields in the south and in the north the Sudanese have an oil company that's part owned by the Chinese part owned by some of the Arabs and they want to clear these people off this land so they can drill for their oil and so big is this that a friend of mine Brad Phillips has lobbied Congress for these last several years and he got every one of the congressmen 435 black-and-white Democrat Republican to sign on to a bill to not do business with North Sudan until they stopped punishing and killing the southern Sudanese Christians and President Reagan signed it into law just a few months ago yes president President Bush what did I say this sees bright light shining in my eyes see those are the listening on the radio yeah I'm up here with this bright light somebody causes my brain to go on the blink but President Bush signed it and also the other problem with AIDS in Africa that's a crisis that's looking for an answer and you and I can make a difference in that I'm gonna go on and talk about a few others just because they're so interesting that I want to get to Carver who's my favorite the Buffalo Soldiers the 9th and 10th cavalry units after the Civil War african-american men volunteered and went out west and they were soldiers too in the different Indian Wars and so forth and they were excellent and they got a reputation but the Indians called him the Buffalo Soldiers why because the Indians respected the Buffalo and and they were so strong and so determined and so hard to to discourage and there's a man named Richard Allen Richard Allen was born a slave in 1777 he began going to a Methodist Church and the pastor there was Freeborn garrison it was an itinerant preacher and so Richard Allen invite and and his master was a nice guy you know back then there were four different levels of views toward slavery you had the farthest north that said slavery's wrong get rid of it now you had the middle North that said slavery is wrong let's just sort of ease out of it over a period of time then you had the middle South that said slavery is wrong but we to live with it and spend here for centuries then you got the deep south that said slavery's slavery's right let's keep it and I don't know how they could justify it but you read some of those writings and they tried to so they had all these confusing different views richard allen's master was one of those ones that said that slavery is wrong but we got to live with it anyway Richard Allen invites this preacher over to the house to preach a sermon and the preacher and thank God for anointed preachers like Joe dollar this preacher came in there and started preaching in the home and Alan's master got converted and the preacher preached on Judgment Day and what would happen to the slaveholder that the slaveholder would be weighed in the balance and found wanting while so convicted was this that richard allen's owner went ahead and allowed him to get his freedom so richard allen was there in the civil war Revolutionary War excuse me Revolutionary War he earned his living by sawing cord wood and driving a wagon during the revolution after the war he furthered the Methodist caused by becoming a licensed exhorter preaching to blacks and whites from New York to South Carolina and is that his efforts attracted the attention of Methodist leaders including francis asbury now francis asbury was the horseback Methodist preacher that rode over 300,000 miles on horseback I mean talk about saddles or anyway he he was what they call the circuit riding preachers circuit meant to circle and he would travel from Canada down to Florida and preach in all his tough communities where they might not have a preacher come through but once a month and then he got lots more of them and more of them in Mormon and so the Methodist Church went from just about 30 people to like 30,000 people because it was life and anyway francis asbury encouraged richard allen and helped him to get a church started and francis asbury went to and dedicated richard allen's church and richard allen's church was started in 1792 by 1795 he had 121 members 10 years later he had 157 male members 10 years later it was almost 1300 members and now the AME African at a Methodist Episcopal Church covers the world it's all over and then in 1816 he won legal recognition and this ladies and gentlemen is a man who was anointed by God to make a difference and in addition to that he operated several businesses and as a result was able to serve the church without collecting a salary these are examples that we need to follow these are examples that are meant by the Lord to encourage us the same way that the Bible stories encourage us now Booker T Washington Booker T Washington was born a slave in Virginia when the Civil War ended he and his family moved to West Virginia he worked in a salt mine and in a coal mine and he worked hard and in his spare time would study and then he walked when he was 16 years old he walked 500 miles to Hampton College which was founded by a General Armstrong who was a Union General in the revolution and Civil War look at my war straight here general Armstrong started Hampton College for the freed black men women Booker T Washington walks 500 miles goes there and gets his education afterwards he teaches at several different places and then he goes back to Hampton and they give him a job and he's such a great teacher that in 1881 he goes down to Alabama and forms the Tuskegee Institute and by the time he died it had over 3,000 students his memoirs Booker T Washington's memoirs are in the Library of Congress I mean they're considered national treasures and let me just read a couple quotes in it in the back of the book on George Washington Carver I have an appendix of quotes from Booker T Washington this is what he wrote in his up from slavery book he says if no other consideration had convinced me of the value of the Christian life the christ-like work which the churches of all denominations in America have done during the last 35 years for the elevation of the black man would have made me a Christian in a large degree it has been the pennies in the nickels and the dimes which come from Sunday schools and Christian Endeavor societies and missionary societies as well as from the church proper that have helped to elevate the Negro at a rapid rate and this is another line he says talking about how he goes around and speaks all around the country and he says the next morning the before day I went carefully over what I plan to say at this big meeting in Atlanta where thousands showed up he says I also kneeled down and asked God's blessing upon my effort right here perhaps I ought to add that I make it a rule never to go before an audience on any occasion without asking the blessing of God upon what I was to say then he goes on to write about Tuskegee says Tuskegee is strictly unda nomination --all but thoroughly Christian and the spiritual training of our students is not neglected our preaching service prayer meeting Sunday School Christian Endeavor society's young men Christian Association and various missionary organizations testify to this he goes on to say we have a department at Tuskegee known as the Phelps Hall Bible Training School in which a number of students are preparing for the ministry or other farms forms of Christian work and then he says this with God's help I believe that I have completely rid myself of any ill feeling toward the southern white man for any wrong that he may have inflicted upon my race you know one of the things I've noticed about the men and women whether it's Clarence Thomas that could have a right to be bitter but he's not you know whether it's the different people or Booker T Washington they could have a right to be bitter that Jesus Christ is the only answer to the race problem Jesus Christ is the only one that can bring healing when richard allen's master got saved that's when he was convicted of slavery I tell you what ladies and gentlemen when people that are racist would ever color their when they get saved when they get Jesus Christ that's when they get rid of any prejudice or biased am i doing ok this is a statute at Tuskegee of Booker T Washington and it's famous statue I don't know if you can see it but it's a former slave coming out from underneath the cloak and Booker T is lifting back the cloak and helping him out and this is President Calvin Coolidge who had visited Tuskegee and a great inspiration Booker T Washington he had courage to go to the highest people in the land and asked for support for his college this is Andrew Carnegie Carnegie steel this is President Taft and listen to this quote from Booker T Washington he says the more I come into contact with wealthy people the more I believe that they are growing in the direction of looking upon their money as simply an instrument which God has placed in their hands for doing good I never go to the office of mr. john d rockefeller who more than once has been generous to Tuskegee without being reminded of this the close careful and minut investigation that he always makes in order to be sure that every dollar that he gives will be used to the most good an investigation that is just as searching as if he were investing money in a business enterprise convinces me that the growth in this direction is most encouraging thank God for leaders like Booker T Washington and now to the main subject somebody that has impacted my life George Washington Carver with a statue there is a bronze statue of George as a young boy sitting on a rock in the in the country there on the grounds of the Carver Memorial in Diamond Grove Missouri and when he was born in 1865 slavery was just ending and his dad had belonged to the next farm over mr. Grant's farm and he the dad died in a log hauling accident when they were carrying logs out of the woods and he slip and fell under the wheels so we never met his dad and we was still an infant there were bushwhackers going through southwestern Missouri Jesse James ever heard Jesse James well he was a Confederate soldier when the war was over he liked the shooting and so forth and well there were groups of people that sort of took law into their own hands and they would go around him and they went would go to farms and especially if it was a Union sympathising farm and so they went to the Carver farm to try to rob him and one of the things they did was they hung up Moses Carver that he was a German immigrant with his wife Susan they were childless he hung him up by his thumbs to try to torch him to get him to tell where the treasure was hidden well they didn't have any treasure and so the bushwhackers took Mary and little baby George and a sister and they fled to North Arkansas well they cut Moses Carver down and he sends a friend out with his best horse to go chase after him and the next day they catch him in northern Arkansas and they say look you know just give us him back and we'll give you this horse and those best racehorses and they said we'll tie the horse to the fence and leave and we'll bring him back so they tie the horse and leave when they come back there's no mom there's no daughter all there is lying and a blanket dying of whooping cough his little baby George he's as good as dead thin skinny they pick him up and they bring him back to Moses and Suzan Moses and Suzan raised him as their own they don't have children and they have George and his older brother Jim Jim was healthy and so he worked with Moses out in the fields and George was sickly so he stayed in the house with Susan and she taught him how to read taught him how to cook Twitter - Oh taught him how to iron taught him out of crochet all these these little tasks that later in life would become invaluable to him when he was free time he would go into the woods and he'd collect little weeds you know and he'd build his own little garden and he says sometimes he made time many tears he would shed when he'd break the roots of one of his pets he called his little plants but but he got he developed a green thumb and so much that the other farmers when they had plants that were sick they'd either you know bring him to little George or have George come and look at their farm and he'd tell him what you needed you know do this or that and he became known as a little plant doctor well when he was eleven years old he went into town in Neosho with Moses to pick up supplies and he noticed a bunch of african-american children lined up in front of a house and he goes what's that and he says oh that's a school for Negro children and he says I want to go there so he goes back home and they pray about and they've always encouraged him to learn and so she cooks him a bunch of loaves of bread and he goes into town into Neosho and goes to the school there and if the first night he sleeps in the loft of a barn and the next day he's taken in by aunt Mariah and uncle Andy Watkins who were a childless black couple she gave him his first Bible which he'd cherished and carried with him always and George would go around town and do odd jobs for people to raise money to pay for his grade school education now can you imagine that how many of you have children I mean imagine eleven year old child orphan going around town who knocking on doors what kind of earn money to pay for his grade school well two and a half years he learns all that schoolmaster foster can teach him so he hitches a ride with the family going to Fort Scott Kansas he lives in a lean-to behind a stagecoach depot and then he cooks for a wealthy family in town and they let him live underneath their back porch and then he earns money to go pay for his high school education and he witnessed a lynching there and he fled I mean so he experienced that terrible prejudice in his own life and I I left that in the book as well and so then he fled to another town Paola and Olathe Kansas and he would open up a little laundry or he would do odd jobs and he became this industrious and finally graduated from high school and went to applied to Highland College and he got accepted to college so he goes back to Neosho and he shows his acceptance letter to college here he's so proud of himself you know started with nothing and went out on the road and now he's accepted to college and goes to the shows everybody many when its fall it's time to go to college he shows up at the University and the president looks up from the desk he says oh I'm sorry there's been a mistake they don't let him in because of his race terrible anyway dejected he goes to Western Kansas and he homesteads which was a valuable experience forum because he learns what a farmer has to go through and little did he know that later on he'd be the answer to prayer to lots of farmers and so while he's in western Kansas the people there love him he plays his accordion and their dances and he sings he had a beautiful voice and he paints and they fell in love and so it could his correspondence with him the rest of his life with the people in western Kansas were so special then he went to Kansas City and he learned went to a business school to learn type writing and telegraph you know the dot dot dot and he worked for the Union Telegraph Company I mean talk about industrious then he goes to Winterset Iowa and becomes the head cook at a hotel and while he was there he writes about meeting some people and let me just read this story to you in fact if I can indulge in you I want to go back just to here and give you a story of how Carver became a Christian and this book is a collection of his letters that he wrote throughout his life so you get to read his writings it's not it's not me telling you it's his this was a letter in July 24th 1931 to miss Isabel Coleman of Greensboro North Carolina and she asked how he became a Christian then he said I was just a mere boy when converted hardly ten years old isn't much to the story God just came into my heart one afternoon while I was alone in the loft of our big barn while I was shelling corn to be carried to the mill to be ground into flour a dear little white boy one of our neighbors about my age came by one Saturday morning and in talking and playing he told me he was going to Sunday school tomorrow morning I was eager to know what a Sunday school was he said they sang hymns and prayed I asked him what prayer was and what they said I do not remember what he said only remember that as soon as he left I climbed into the loft of my barn knelt down by the barrel of corn and prayed as best I could I do not remember what I said I only recall that I felt so good that I prayed several times before I quit and that presses and he goes on to say my favorite song is must Jesus bear the cross alone and all the world go free anyway when he is a young man and he's in Winterset Iowa he writes how he visited a church and let me just find this story for you here he says one evening I went to a white church and set in the rear of the house and the next day a handsome man called for me at the hotel and said his wife wanted to see me when I reached the splendid residence I was astonished to recognize her as the prima donna in the choir I was most astonished when she told me that that my fine voice had attracted her and Carver had a very there's a high voice but it was very beautiful because he's saying he even studied her singing in school so she had me sing quite a number of songs for her and and made me agree to come by her house at least once a week and from that time till now mr. and mrs. mill Holland have been my warmest and most helpful friends I cooked at this hotel for some time then opened a laundry for myself I ran the laundry for one year this same mr. and mrs. milhollin encouraged me to go to college it was her custom to have me come by the day and rehearse the doings of the day she would invariably laugh at such a recital and said who so ever heard of any one person doing half so many things she encouraged me to sing and paint for which parts I had a passionate fondness in one year I had saved enough money to take me to Simpson College in Indianola Iowa where I took art and music and College work I opened a laundry here for my support after all my matriculation fees had been paid I had 10 cents worth a corn meal and 5 cents worth of beef suet I lived on these two things for a whole week it took that long for people to learn that I wanted to clothes to wash after that week I had many friends and plenty of work I would never allow anyone to give me money no difference how badly I needed it I wanted literally to earn my living imagine that this is I remain here for three years and his art teacher was miss Etta Bud now this is um this lady right down here was his art teacher miss Etta bud and he writes about how she was always an encourage to him and this is him painting at Simpson College that's him and here's the this chair and there's the easel that is painting on and his paintings were so good that one of his paintings the yucca plant which was the plant he saw when he was in western Kansas remember he didn't want to go out there first we went there he saw this western Kansas this plant went to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and got an honorable mention I don't know about you but it'll be pretty nice to have a painting of mine you know go to the World's Fair and here you recognize Carver had a tremendous artistic gift well miss Etta bud noticed how well he painted the plants and she said you know you must really like plants and he goes well yeah I do and she said you know you could help more people in agriculture than you can through your painting why don't you go to Iowa State College of Agriculture where my dad teaches you know if there's any teachers out there the power you have to steer that young mind of letting that young woman or that young man is immense well she encouraged him he went ahead to Iowa State College of Agriculture he shows up at the campus and he said being a colored boy and the crowded condition of the school made it rather embarrassing for some and made the question of a room for me rather puzzling professor Wilson who was the head of the agricultural department as soon as he heard it he said send him to me I have a room and he gave me his office and was very happy in doing so your carver lived in the office of the head of the agricultural department he goes on to write this Wilson the Honorable James Wilson is sacred to me he was one of the finest teachers said it was ever my privilege to listen to he taught a Sunday school class in which every student would have enrolled if they had been allowed the class grew so large that he conceived of a very unique plan to divide it and graduated some 20-25 of us who had been with him the longest I happen to be one of those graduated we all left him sad and reluctantly and gave him to understand in no uncertain terms that we did not like it at all but out of our love for him we went but in less than two months we were all back again our displeasure grieved him very much and he said to me many times that he would never try to divide the class again no matter how large it got well Carver had James Wilson as one of his professors and let me see if I can find James Wilson James Wilson the guy that gave him his office to live in he went on to become the United States Secretary of Agriculture so Carver had another professor Henry a Wallace Henry a Wallace I'm sorry Henry C Wallace he goes on to become United States Secretary of Agriculture and then Henry a Wallace his son is a student at Iowa State Carver gets his graduates from college he's the first black graduate in the entire state of Iowa Carver then gets his master's degree Carver then gets offered an assistant botanist position at the college he is so brilliant they give him a position on staff he's in charge of the laboratories in charge of the greenhouses and then Henry C Wallace's son becomes a student underneath the Carver so Henry C Wallace grows up and becomes US Secretary of Agriculture and vice president for FDR this this guy vice-president for FDR was George Washington Carver's student so George Washington Carver was rubbing shoulders with the top people in the country and and this is some of the other stuff he was in the ROTC there on campus and these are the different clubs that he was a part of that's him there and he was the top of his class and so responsible and always on time and anyway so again he's rubbing shoulders with the top people in the country in the agricultural field and then he gets a letter and the letter was from Booker T Washington and this is what the letter said it's 1896 Tuskegee Institute seeks to provide an education a means of survival for those that attend our students are poor often starving they travel miles of torn roads and across years of poverty we teach them to read and write but words cannot fill stomachs they need to learn how to plant and harvest crops listen to this I cannot offer you money position or fame the first two you have the last from the place you know occupy you will no doubt achieve these things I now ask you to give up and in their place I offer you work hard hard work but the knowledge that you will bring a people from degradation poverty and waste into full manhood signed Booker T Washington Carver rights back may 16th 1890 six my dear sir I'm just in receipt of your letter of the 13th and hates them to reply I'm looking forward to a very busy Pleasant and profitable time at your college and she'll be glad to cooperate with you and doing all I can through Christ who strengtheneth me to better the condition of our people ladies and gentlemen that's one aspect of Carver that is overlooked in today he said through Christ who strengtheneth me to better the condition of our people he was a Christian well I wanted to read a couple other quotes for you before we move on when he was at Simpson College the art college this is a letter he wrote to the mill Hollins he said I'm glad the outlook for the up building of the kingdom of Christ is so good we were having a great revival here for tea seeking last night 25 arose for prayer at the close of the service says she'll be glad to hear from you soon George Carver he was going to a church where they had altar calls and this is what he wrote from Iowa State when he first got there he says dear mr. and mrs. milhollin I as yet do not like it here as well as I did it Simpson because the helpful means for a Christian growth is not as good but the Lord helping me I will do the best I can I'm glad to hear that the work for Christ is progressing oh how I wish people would awake from their lethargy and come out soul and body for Christ on and on he talks about his faith well he goes down to Tuskegee and when he's down there he finds that there is no agricultural department oh by the by the way when he leaves they pitch in and they the staff at Iowa State buy him a microscope now this was an expensive top-of-the-line instrument I mean that would be like you know your job they buy you the top-of-the-line computer before you leave they buy on this this microscope well he gets down at Tuskegee and there's no Department so he sends his students out to the junk yard to the trash can to get broken bottles and I'll take a broken bottle and turn it upside down and make a funnel out of it and old pieces of tubes and old pans and and he make he creates his laboratory out of this junk and then he teaches his students and they go out to the farmers around there and what he discovers is that the farmers have been growing cotton year after year after year and the cotton depletes the soil it sucks the nutrients out so every year you grow it you get less and so not only will they bad enough but the boll weevil comes through a little bitty bug that gets inside the cotton and eats what's left so these companies farmers were devastated so Carver who knows agriculture who experienced farming he says ok you need to rotate crops new irrigation and new fertilization and all this type of stuff and then he says you plant legumes which were peanuts sweet potatoes and soybeans because their root type plants and there's little fungus that grows on the roots that puts nitrogen back into the soil and fertilizer is basically just nitrogen and so it fertilized the soil and so the farmers started growing peanuts and they were only using it really for horse feed you know alfalfa or something and so they started growing more and more peanuts and they had more peanuts than the market wanted and so carver went into his laboratory and asked god to give him ideas on what the peanut can be used for and he created over 300 uses for the peanut he literally created a 500 million dollar industry he created it now listen to some of this stuff 32 different kinds of milk dehydrated milk butter milk peanut butter salted peanuts peanut flour peanut from butter from peanut milk cream cheese mock beef mock chicken you know we talked about soy burgers you know all that hamburger joint doesn't have real hamburgers there's soy burgers Carver's the one that learned how to take a soy bean and turn it into the texture and flavor of meat he called it mock beef and mock chicken chili sauce Chop Suey where scooter sauce vinegar molasses oleo margarine mayonnaise salad oil cooking oil peanut brittle peanut butter chocolate popcorn peanut kisses that sounds good castor oil quinine rubbing oil laxative cold cream shaving cream baby massage face cream oil for hair scalp shampoo face powder talcum powder antiseptic soap glycerine appointment animal feed and farming hog feed stock feed fertilizer leather stains from mahogany to blue wood stains paint shoe polish leather polish metal polish writers ink printers ink dies for cloth non-toxic pigments from which crayons were eventually created you know how many of you had a kitty - crayon and they don't die you know well you know the lead-based paint they die but back then most of the colors had the like a lead base they were dangerous to eat well he created non-toxic colors adhesives alcohol paper rope cordage synthetic cotton synthetic scent plastics rubber lubricating oil axle grease laundry soap washing powder cleaning wall boards from the peanut hulls carpet linoleum wood filler synthetic marble highway paving material creosote gloog nitroglycerin how can you make face cream at night listen around the same stuff I'll never figure out anyway gasoline diesel fuel oil charcoal briquets all of this stuff well he spoke before the YMCA he was speaking all he actually had a Bible study that he was leading it Tuskegee and that's in the book I won't read it but he says years ago I went into my laboratory this is what he said in 1920 at the Young Men's Christian Association in Blue Ridge North Carolina years ago I went to my laboratory and said dear mr. creator can you tell me what the universe was made for the Great Creator answered you want to know too much for that little mind of yours asked for something more your size little man then I said mr. creator can you tell me what man was made for again the Great Creator replied you're still asking too much cut down on the extant and improve on the intent so I asked please mr. creator can you tell me what the peanut was made for that's better but even that's infinite what do you want to know about the peanut mr. creator can I make milk out of the peanut what kind of milk do you want to make good Jersey milk or just plain boardinghouse milk good Jersey milk then the Great Creator taught me to take apart the peanut and put it back together again and out of that process has come far I'll come forth all these products and then he was going to say that three and a half ounces of peanuts produce one pint of rich milk then in 1924 the peanut industry grows over five million acres are growing peanuts now the farmers form a united peanut growers association and they ask Carver to go to Washington DC to lobby Congress on a tariff on imported peanuts because they were bringing them in from China cheaper than them we could grow him here so here's Carver goes to Washington DC he only had one suit and it looked pretty old and he would put a brand-new flower in the lapel every day well anyway he goes to the door of the Capitol and the doorman wouldn't let him in again some of the prejudiced well they're waiting in there he doesn't show up and it's like ten minutes before the end of the day and that will the congressman finally finds out he's waiting goes there and apologizes apologizes and brings them in has him before the business I said well I'm sorry you only got ten minutes now how would you feel if you kept all prepared you travel from Alabama to DC and they tell you only got ten min because some doorman wouldn't let you in I mean that would be an opportunity to get upset you know but car Burt calm and peaceful stands before them and and these are pictures I'm flashed over the screen as students they're at Tuskegee and here's he goes out to the farmers in the fields and loses the cotton and I apologize those are listening by radio don't know what's on the screen here but I'm flipping through to find one picture but here's the cotton crops shows how they depleted the soil I mean this is the cotton at the docks look at that tons and tons of cotton you know it made me feel terrible for all those slaves that had to pick all that for all those years anyway here's Carver and on the table in front of him are all these bottles of all these different things that he created and he's holding up the different ones and so he's standing before the congressman in the US House Ways and Means Committee know January 21st 1921 and he begins by quoting a scripture he says if you go to the first chapter of Genesis we can interpret very clearly I think what God intended when he said behold I've given you every herb that bears seed to you it shall be meat and he says this is what I believe that it literally shall be meat everything is there to strengthen and nourish the body and keep it healthy and he pulls out all these different things and at the end of it an hour and 45 after 10 minutes the guy says your time is unlimited and so he talks for an hour and 45 minutes and what he's done the congressman said dr. Carver how did you learn all these things he said from an old book what old book has carvery said the Bible he says does the Bible tell about peanuts no sir Carver said it tells about the God who made the peanut I asked him to show me what to do with the peanut and he did isn't that precious well Carver was asked to speak in New York City at the New York's marble Collegiate Church 500 women of the Board of domestic missions and he gets there and he says God is gonna reveal things to us he never revealed before if we put our hands in his no books ever go into my laboratory the thing I am to do in the way of doing it are revealed to me I never have to grope for methods he says the moment I'm inspired to create something I have the method he says without God to draw aside the curtain I would be helpless sounds nice right the New York Times had somebody in the audience the next day they run an article condemning Carver saying real Menace science never talked that way they make fun of him they make fun of his race they make fun of his religion in the new york times how many of you have had media say bad things about you anyway Carver writes back November 24th 1924 to the editor of the New York Times my dear sir I have read with much interest your editorial pertaining to myself in the same issue of November 20th I regret exceedingly that such gross misunderstandings should arise why what was meant by divine inspiration it is never at a variance with information in fact the more information one has the greater will be the inspiration Paul the great scholar said in 2nd Timothy 2:15 study to show thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not be ashamed and again Paul said in Galatians 4 I need the received it of man neither was I taught it by him but it was by revelation of Jesus Christ he says many other scriptures I could give but these two are sufficient to cluster my remarks around he says I'm a graduate of Iowa State College of Agriculture mechanical arts and I Ames Iowa I have two degrees in scientific agriculture I did work at Simpson College and do you know it and then he lists dozens of these scientists that he studied under and read their material in madame curiae the guy later that developed radiology and he just on and on and on then he finally says in your beautiful city of New York I was struck by the large number of Taro's and Yaga's which are roots in your marketplace they are edible roots imported from Trinidad Puerto Rico China Dutch Guiana as soon as I saw these roots I marveled at the wonderful possibilities for their expansion dozens of things came to mind while I looked at them I would follow the similar plan that I pursued in developing products from the white potato I know of no one who has ever worked with these roots in this way I know of no book from which I can get this information yet I will have no problem in doing it if this is not inspiration from a source greater than myself are greater than anyone who has run up to the present time kindly tell me what it is and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free so Carver becomes the buzz and the New York Times have other people writing editorials and they're writing back and forth and back and forth and this becomes a tremendous thing all across the country and this is a letter that Carver got from somebody and he writes back many thanks for your letter this is how it lifted my soul and made me feel that after all God moves in mysterious ways he says I did indeed feel badly for a while not that the cynical criticism was directed at me but rather at the religion of Jesus Christ dear brother I know that my Redeemer liveth I believe through the Providence of the Almighty that it was a good thing since the criticism was made I have had dozens of books papers periodicals magazines personal letters from individuals and all walks of life copies and letters from the editor of The Times are bearing me out in that assertion he gets all these letters and I'm gonna find this one picture here where there's Carver in front of a stack of letters now for those that are listening there's like a 3-foot high stack of letters that Carver's sitting next to he was getting letters from Mahatma Gandhi over in India and Joseph Stalin inviting him to Russia he was being visited at Tuskegee by Calvin Coolidge in FDR he was getting job offers from Thomas Edison who invented the light bulb on the phonograph saying come to Menlo Park I'll give you all your equipment he got a job offer from Henry Ford and because he could Carver could take a milkweed and turn it into rubber and Ford was looking for a new source of rubber for his automobiles a six-figure income if he would leave to ski he said no no no I'm called here Carver had two US postage stamps with his image on him schools named after him a 50-cent piece coin with his image and Booker T Washington's image on him and he had a nuclear submarine named after him in 1960 called the USS George Washington Carver and the motto is strength through knowledge this is a man who has impacted the world in a powerful powerful way the last 10 years of his life and I'm just gonna I'm winding up here he's spent praying for people now he had developed phenol which was an oil made out of peanuts for massaging and back then a lot of people had had polio and atrophied limbs you know FDR had contracted it you know and so he would massage these limbs and help them to get the use of their limbs back now as time goes on scientists realized that the oil didn't have that much to do with it it just kept them from being rubbed raw but Carver literally pioneered the field of physical therapy where you could work a limb and get anyway this is what he wrote in 1934 he says I have patients who come to me on crutches who are now walking 6 miles without tiring without either a crutch or a cane my last patient today was one of the sweetest five year old boys who three months ago had to be carried into my room being paralyzed from the waist down when I finished the massage today much to our astonishment he dressed himself and stood and walked across the room without any support and he says I said our patients because I feel that your prayers helped make this possible and it's truly marvelous what the Lord is doing another letter he said that today I had somebody walked to or one man came 200 miles with his afflicted son and in other places I have now before me 3,000 letters from suffering you man and he besides the people who come to me every day I often have to refuse to see anyone until I get a little rest your letters are a great inspiration and then he says a Georgia pastor of a large church over in Georgia had just informed me that the whole congregation prayed for me last night and this is what he wrote to the tuskegee pastor he says I thank you also for your sermon at Greenwood Baptist Church if we do not take Christ seriously in our everyday life all is failure because it is an everyday affair if we can just understand that the golden rule way of living is the only correct method and the only christ-like method this will settle all our difficulties that bother us and then finally I'm going to end with a letter that he wrote to James Harwick in 1928 he said as a small boy exploring the almost virgin woods of the old Carver place I had the impression that someone had been there just ahead of me things were so orderly so clean so harmoniously beautiful a few years later in the same woods I was to understand the meaning of this boyish impression because I was practically overwhelmed by some great presence not only had someone been there someone was there years later when I read the scripture in him we live and move and have our being I knew what the rider meant never since have I been without the consciousness of the Creator speaking to me man who needed a purpose a mission to keep him alive had one he could be God's co-worker my attitude toward life was my attitude toward science Jesus said one must be born again must become as a little child he must let no laziness no fear no stubbornness keep him from that duty if he were born again he would see life from such a plane that he would have the energy not to be impeded in his life he said my purpose alone must be God's purpose to increase the welfare and happiness of his people nature will not permit a vacuum it will be filled with something human need is really a great spiritual vacuum which God seeks to fill with one hand in the hand of a fellow man and the other in the hand of Christ he could get across that vacuum and I became an agent then the passage I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me came to have real meaning as I worked on projects which will feel fulfilled the real human need forces were working through me which amazed me I would often go to sleep at night with an apparently insoluble problem when I awoke the answer was there why then should we who believe in Christ be so surprised at what God can do with the Willing in a laboratory some things must be baffling to the critic who has never been born again I ask you to bow your heads with me as we close Heavenly Father I'd considered an honor to speak before this esteemed audience today and to speak over the radio to the thousands that are listening and I believe it's not by coincidence and lord I do believe in my heart that this is a timely message the black men and women that have made contribution to our society need to be exalted and lifted up as men and women of courage in the face of opposition and they are an inspiration to every color of mankind and as we work on projects which will fill a real human need that forces will work through us it's a force of the Holy Spirit Lord I ask right now your eyes go to and fro across this room young men young boys young girls young women you can do what George Washington Carver did you can start with nothing and impact the world - those of us that are older no matter what age were at God loves to use the foolish things of the world to confound the wise he brings the mighty down and he exalts the humble Lord I pray right now there's anybody within the sound of my voice that has never given their life to Jesus Jesus who's the answer to the race problem Jesus who's the healer of the hearts Jesus is the one who has unlimited potential can free us of slavery of bondage to sin Jesus I ask that you stand at the door and knock on the heart if you're in here today and I may you may have never heard of me and may never hear from me again it's not a coincidence that you're here we're all just humble vessels of clay and God choose what color our skin would be but someday we're gonna stand before him and in the brilliance of his presence all that's gonna matter is if we put our faith in the cross of Christ and Jesus who paid for our sins who suffered on the cross he's forgiven us so that we can be used by him and I just ask you to pray this prayer under your breath wherever you're at just close your eyes it's nothing magic but it's a beginning and just say this prayer out in your heart or whisper it dear Jesus forgive me of my sins have mercy on me I'm a sinner and I ask you come into my heart give me a new life I know that you love me that you have planned good things for me I trust you Jesus that you died in my place so I don't have to and you rose from the dead and I'm risen with you and though my mind doesn't understand everything I trust you with my heart and I trust in the days ahead you'll make it clear to me make me a new person let today be a day of healing a new beginning in my life and let it be a new beginning in our country
