Funding for George
Washington Carver: An Uncommon Life is brought
to you by -- ♪♪ Wherever your operation takes you or who
you share it with we'll be where we've been all
along, with you from the word go. ♪♪ The Wallace
Genetic Foundation. ♪♪ The Alliant
Energy Foundation. ♪♪ And by the
Des Moines Community Playhouse. ♪♪ He was a
man of many talents. He was an individual with
a broad foundation and a love of life. He was more than just
a scientist, he was an artist, he was an
educator, he was a humanitarian. And he did so much
to help others. Scientist, professor, a
leader, a man of faith. He was a conservationist. He was very creative
and he had a childlike wonderment about life. He loved humanity
in the beginning. He loved blacks
and whites. George Washington Carver
was a man of hope. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Who was George Washington Carver? George Washington Carver's
rise from slavery to scientific accomplishment
has inspired people worldwide. Even today, children study
the story of Carver, and lists of prominent
African-Americans always contain his name. Yet time has dulled the
luster of his reputation, reducing him to the man
who did something with peanuts. ♪♪ George Washington
Carver was a complex man who had many gifts. In 1941, Time magazine
dubbed him the "black Leonardo". Dana Chandler: George
Washington Carver was an artist. He was a scientist. He was a geologist. He was a poet. He was a Bible scholar. That's a renaissance man. Luther Williams: George
Washington Carver was a creative genius who was
able to invoke personal and shared identities
to protect him from the verogances of enslavement,
discrimination and who took those negative
experiences and translated them into the unit
of humanity that is extraordinary locally,
nationally and internationally. Following Carver's death
in 1943, the nation rushed to memorialize him. Congress made his
birthplace a national monument. Postage stamps and coins
were issued with his likeness. And naval vessels and
scores of public buildings were named in his honor. Sceiva Holland: He was a
man of concern, a man of vision, a man who
actually wanted to make a difference and the
difference wasn't necessarily for him, it
was a difference for other people. Born into slavery in the
final months of the Civil War, George Washington
Carver rose to become one of the best-known
and widely respected African-Americans
in the world. Henry Ford called him "the
world's greatest living scientist". Presidents and poor black
farmers alike praised him. Mahatma Gandhi's assistant
asked him for advice in creating a vegetarian diet
for the Indian activist. Groups as different as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People and the United Daughters of the
Confederacy honored him. Gary Kremer: He is a
useable hero for Americans and I think that's a
disservice to Carver. I think he is important
for a lot of reasons other than that. In reality, Carver
was a complicated man. Thousands of people around
the world held warm affection for him and
regarded him as a personal friend. Yet, Carver never married,
lived alone in a dormitory room most of his adult
life, seldom socialized and worked by himself
in his laboratory. He was known for his
humility and simplicity, wearing a tattered suit
adorned by a single flower in his lapel. He devoted his life to
helping African-American farmers suffering the
oppression of racism, poverty and ignorance. Peter Burchard: He used
to quote this little poem called It's Service
That Measures Success. And the gist of it was it
isn't the price of the clothes that you're
wearing or the number of servants who come at your
call, it's service that measures success. He stated things simply
and beautifully and that's one thing that I think
makes him so relevant is that he's accessible. George Washington Carver's
long journey to worldwide fame began in obscure
circumstances. He was born around 1864 on
an isolated Missouri farm owned by Moses Carver. Both of his parents
were slaves. His father was crushed
under the wheels of a lumber cart around the
time of George's birth. Before George was a year
old, he and his mother Mary were abducted by
lawless raiders and taken to Arkansas where
they could be resold. Moses Carver dispatched a
Union Army scout to find and return them. The man somehow found
George desperately ill with whooping cough, but
Mary was never seen again. Moses and Susan Carver
took George and his older half-brother Jim into
their home and raised them as their own. Orphaned, sickly and
newly freed from slavery, George's prospects
were dead. From an early age,
however, he was drawn to nature, seen as special. He was unusually talented
at almost everything he tried to do and he had a
raging curiosity to learn everything he could. Lana Henry: He spoke about
the time that he would have out in nature and
just enjoying the solace, the tranquility and
speaking to the Creator is what he did. And then he took that
throughout his lifetime. Throughout his life he
then had this love of nature, which then went
into the plant life and went into how he could
take plants and break them down chemically and create
other products all of the benefit of helping people. Peter Burchard: He had
what could be called visions. He said, "As a very small
boy exploring the almost virgin woods of the old
Carver place, I had the impression that someone
had just been there ahead of me. Things were so orderly,
so clean, so harmoniously beautiful, a few years
later in these same woods I was to understand the
meaning of this boyish impression because I was
practically overwhelmed with a sense of some great
presence, not only had someone been there,
someone was there. I knew even then that it
was the great spirit of the universe. Never since have I been
without this consciousness of God speaking to me
through plants, rocks and every other aspect of his
creation." Curtis Gregory: Being here,
being in the wooded area when he had free time where he would
learn about how flowers would grow, how trees
would grow and was very curious and would explore
and would ask a lot of questions from
what I understand. And he became known as the
plant doctor when he was in the woods here. And I really do believe
it influenced him quite a bit. Because George was often
sick and frail, his brother Jim helped
Moses on the farm. George helped Susan with
household chores, where he learned to sew, cook and
do laundry and needlework. Moses' influence was seen
in George's relentless work ethic, love of music
and his disdain for wastefulness. Gary Kremer: The paradox
is that this young African-American kid
grew up in a household dominated by two rather
elderly white people and for a time he had his
brother Jim with him. But beyond his brother
Jim, there is no evidence that Carver had much
contact with other African-Americans and
to me that is a very important reality
of his life. So he is born in a state
that is in great conflict, the conflict ends but the
animosities don't, and he is born into a state that
is segregated when it came to education. African-Americans and
whites went to separate schools. And that would have, I
think, a tremendous effect on Carver. There were multiple
instances in Carver's life in which he refers to
himself variously as the orphan child of
a despised race. And that has always been
a very telling phrase for me. I think in that regard
Carver had a lot of tremendous insecurities. Why wouldn't he? The Carvers did their best
to provide George with some education. But by the time he was
around 12 years old his curiosity could no
longer be contained. There was a school for
blacks in Neosho, a town eight miles away. George set out alone and
on foot to achieve an education. ♪♪ Luther Williams:
It represents powerful psychological resiliency. What motivates a young
person 10, 12 years old, to leave where he resides
and walk eight miles to a school? It is not only the site
from which he originated his education, it is
the site that actually represents the initiation
of what I call his path to freedom and that
is the anchor. That is the beginning of
the incredible story that is called Carver. ♪♪ When George
arrived in Neosho, Andrew and Mariah Watkins, a
childless black couple, agreed to take him in as
long as he was willing to help with the chores. Even though George lived
with the Watkins only a short period of time,
Mariah seemed to have made a powerful
impression on him. She was a midwife in the
community and had a great knowledge of plants and
their medicinal powers, which appealed to George
and inspired his lifelong conviction illnesses could
be cured through proper use of plants and the
products extracted from them. Mariah's strong faith also
influenced George and she was the first person he
met who urged him to use his genius to
serve their people. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Luther Williams: It's what I term deeply forged
spirituality, which does not mean the same thing
as religion, which I'm arguing that a deeply
forged spirituality requires one to wear it,
be cognoscente of it, be in contact with it in
all one's interactions. And I think one of the
reasons he was such an extraordinary humanitarian
is that it derived from what I just spoke to. ♪♪ George loved
people and he dedicated his life to improving
humanity's lot. He once wrote, "I love
humanity and all humanity who is struggling to be
something and somebody. I am not interested in
complexion, texture of hair, nationality,
etcetera. I like all of God's work. So may we continue to pray
and to love each other more and more, if
possible, as time moves on." William Carver
Lennard: That's what Jesus Christ did, he came
to serve others. And that is what I
feel that Carver did. I think the influence and
impact, the influence of his life, like that of
Christ, influenced a lot of other people in
a very positive way. ♪♪ Gary Kremer:
Dreams were real to him, dreams he perceived to be
God's way of talking to him and in that regard I
think he thought he was special, that he was
imbued with qualities that were God-given. And I think that was a
source of great strength for him and a source
of confidence. Simon Estes: I've always
said, God gives everybody a talent and God gave
George Washington Carver a talent for science without
compromising faith, religion or God. And I think that's
what motivated him. He was born with this
mission, even when he was a little boy, he probably
didn't know when he was five years of age that he
was going to be a great scientist and a great
humanitarian, but God instilled that
in him at birth. George's teacher in
Neosho was unable to give him the level of education
that he desired. So, when a couple stopped
at the Watkins' home on their way to Fort Scott,
Kansas, he hitched a ride. He made friends, many of
them white, but he was never far from the
shadow of racism. In Fort Scott, he
witnessed the lynching of a black man and left
town immediately. Later, he was admitted
to Highland College in Kansas, only to be turned
away when officials saw the color of his skin. Lana Henry: Those kinds
of things could drive you into a cave, you could
just back up and say, I just can't face this. But he didn't, he just
kept driving forward and facing the harsh
realities ahead. And it's so interesting
because towards the end of his life when he was hired
to be a spokesman for interracial cooperation
and what an impact he made on so many people that
went on to impact others and impact others and all
those experiences he had, the encounters and
the racial barriers, struggles, prejudice, and
yet keeping one foot going in front of the other. Curtis Gregory: One thing
I can appreciate from Carver is that, as an
African-American, is that all the things that Carver
went through, leaving here and experiencing hate, and
he did experience hate, that Carver was
never bitter. And that's something
that I definitely can appreciate. Even in our society today,
which some things that Carver went through are
still very relevant today as well, and sometimes
I look on Carver's life story as an example of how
I can be a better person as well. Sceiva Holland: He didn't
take the tragedies of life, the disappointments
of life, to define him. And he had things
happening so much, so many things that you're like
how in the world did he even ever want to do
anything, much less do something? Why would he want to help
somebody else if he wasn't getting some of the things
that he thought he should have? ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Hearing that Iowa might have a college that would
accept him, George went there in 1888, landing in
the town of Winterset, where he found
work at a hotel. Visiting a local church
there, he met a white couple named John and
Helen Milholland. They treated
him like family. Years later he
would say, "Mr. and Mrs. Milholland have
been my warmest and most helpful friends." ♪♪ Paxton Williams: They did not know that he was going
to grow to become this famous scientist or
this famous educator. They just saw that he was
a person who had worth. They saw a person
who had potential. And they took the time
to learn about him as an individual and they took
the time to see what they could do to encourage
that potential. ♪♪ Paxton Williams:
Though we all can't be like Carver, because I
believe he had a real genius, we could all be
like the kind of people who encouraged him and
inspired him in his way, just regular, every day
people doing what they could to learn about
a fellow human being. Helen Milholland
encouraged George to apply to Simpson College, a
small Methodist school 20 miles away in
Indianola, Iowa. He was accepted and
enrolled on September 9th, 1890. Dr. Jay Simmons: Carver
came here and presented his credentials and the
President, President Holms at that time, said well of
course you're welcome here and admitted him and
thus began his career at Simpson College. Years later, George
acknowledged the warmth of his reception at Simpson
College simply saying, "They made me believe I
was a real human being." Paxton Williams: He really
found a home there. There is a well-known
story about how several of his fellow classmates
would invite him to go to concerts and he couldn't
go because he didn't have any money. And before long, after
this was known, he would return home to find
concert tickets slid underneath his door. ♪♪ It was not botany
or chemistry that George yearned to study
at Simpson. He wanted to be an artist,
a painter, and capture the beauty of nature. So it was that he asked
Etta Budd, the college's art teacher, for
admission to her class. And she gave
him the chance. Dr. Jay Simmons: It's kind
of interesting in that she was new to Simpson College
the same year that he came and she was a first year
faculty member in art and he had been drawing and
wanted to pursue his art and met with her and she
was reluctant actually to let him in her art studio
because he didn't present a portfolio or any of the
usual reviews that would give her an indication
of his talent. Nonetheless, he persisted. He was an impressive
fellow and he flourished. And she encouraged him and
as he grew as an artist she helped encourage him
to become better and more adept. But she was concerned that
if he would actually be able to make a living
doing that and realized that he had a great
interest in agriculture, agronomy and botany and
because of that encouraged him to go up to Iowa State
and enter the agricultural program, which
of course he did. ♪♪ In 1891, George
transferred to the Iowa Agricultural College and
Model Farm, now Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa,
where Etta Budd's father taught horticulture. He remained at Iowa State
for five years as its first African-American
student, earning a Master's degree and
becoming the first African-American
faculty member. Luther Williams: I
think it was a powerful validation of his worth,
his worth as seen by others. My view is that at
that point Carver was thereafter in charge of
his own career and life. At first, life for George
at his new school wasn't easy. Paxton Williams: He wasn't
given a room near the other students. He wasn't allowed to eat
with the other students. His professor Pammel
gave him one of his laboratories to live in. And a white lady from
Indianola, a friend named Mrs. Sophia Liston, she
came to visit Carver in Ames. She decided she was going
to walk around with Carver all around town so that
people could see that he was accepted and
known in society. And she insisted that she
would eat wherever he ate. And so whereas before he
had to eat with the hired hands or the workers, the
powers that be decided he could eat with the
other students. I'm very proud of the fact
that Carver decided to stick it out when he
first got to Ames. But I'm also proud of the
fact that the people who perhaps weren't as
welcoming of him when he first got there, they were
able to learn, they were able to grow, they
were able to change. Eventually, he was
embraced by white students and faculty members alike,
who saw in him a spark of genius. ♪♪ Dr. Wendy
Wintersteen: I think that legacy is a message to all
of us today and into the future how important it
is to value diversity, to give all individuals who
choose to work hard, no question that George
Washington Carver worked hard every day, a chance
to excel and to reach their full potential. In Ames, George befriended
James Wilson, head of the agricultural school,
who would serve as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture
for sixteen years. His dairying
professor, Henry C. Wallace, would hold the
same post in the 1920s. And Wallace's
son, Henry A. Wallace, who frequently
accompanied George on nature walks, would serve
as Agriculture Secretary and Vice President
under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Dr. Wendy Wintersteen: On
Sundays, George Washington Carver would be invited
over to the Wallace home for dinner and afterwards
George Washington Carver and Henry A. Wallace would go for walks
and they would study nature, look at plants,
talk about what George Washington Carver was
studying at Iowa State University. And, interestingly so,
George Washington Carver's undergraduate thesis was
on plant hybridization. And here he was
talking to Henry A. Wallace who had founded
Pioneer Hybrid based on plant hybridization. ♪♪ George planned to
obtain a doctorate at Iowa State and the school
wanted very much to keep him on its faculty in
what could have been a contented life of
academic distinction. Then, in 1896, a letter
arrived that would change everything. "I cannot offer you money,
position or fame", it said. "The first two you have. The last, from the place
you now occupy, you will no doubt achieve. These things I now
ask you to give up. I offer you in their place
work, hard, hard work, the task of bringing a people
from degradation, poverty and waste to full
manhood." It was signed by Booker T. Washington, the principal
of an industrial and teacher training institute
for black students in Tuskegee, Alabama. Dr. Charlotte Morris: We
talk about the Tuskegee experience around here and
everyone, everyone talks about it but no one can
just come out and explain exactly what it is. We all know that there
is something about that Tuskegee experience that
keeps you here and keeps you with the desire
to want to do more. It may be the
grounds of Booker T. Washington. It may be George
Washington Carver. Because those were two
great men who walked the grounds of Tuskegee and
so it's an honor and a privilege actually to
come behind them and do something substantial
for the university. Booker T. Washington was determined
to make Tuskegee a leading educational institution in
the South, and his most pressing need was to
establish an agriculture department. But to establish such a
department, Washington recognized that he needed
a black man with an advanced degree
in agriculture. And in all the country
there was only one such man, George
Washington Carver. To lure Carver to
Tuskegee, Washington offered him an annual
salary of $1,000 plus living quarters. Despite Washington's
warning of hard, hard work, Carver
replied to him. "It has always been one
ideal of my life to be the greatest good to the
greatest number of my people possible. And to this end I have
been preparing myself for these many years, feeling
as I do that this line of education is the key to
unlock the golden door of freedom to our people." He
would remain there until his death 47 years later. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Dyann Robinson: Booker T. and Carver believed that
people needed to be taught not only how to live but
to live beautifully and live well and to make
beautiful things out of everything that
was functional. So I think that that's
important, that kind of contribution to learning
that they gave and that legacy is what made
a whole two or three generations back feel that
they could do anything. We had these brilliant
doctors, brilliant scholars up on campus
because they had a place to be geniuses, to show
their genius in this little cocoon, some
little protective sphere. And it started
with Booker T. and this school. He made a place, a space
for people to excel. Carver was part of that. Carver had never been
in the Deep South. Almost everything about
Alabama's system of agriculture, with its
heavy reliance on cotton and its system of
tenant farming called sharecropping,
appalled him. Shirley Baxter: When he
first came on the train here to Tuskegee, he
talked about seeing all the poor sharecroppers'
homes and thinking, wow, they could do better, and
he knew that he could help them do better. And he spent pretty much
that whole career here doing work that was going
to influence and help those local farmers
improve the quality of their lives. In addition to being
administrator of the agriculture department and
two experimental farms, Washington expected Carver
to teach a full load of classes, serve on the
institute's executive committee, oversee the
beautification of the campus, serve temporarily
as its veterinarian and establish an outreach
program for poor black farmers in the
surrounding area. Dana Chandler: Washington
had one vision for Carver and Carver had another
vision for himself. It was tumultuous at
times, but I think and I know that they both had
mutual respect for each other. Carver began his teaching
in an old shack with no facilities. In order to establish some
sort of laboratory, he had to root through junk heaps
to find usable bottles and other items. Dr. Walter Hill: Why in
the heck did he come to Tuskegee? Where he came where people
were jealous of him, clearly the resources he
obtained were less, came to a hostile environment
both politically, socially. Despite all of that
why did he come? You look and read the
history and it comes down, to serve my people. That is the most
fundamental piece that I want to share from my
vantage point of 40 years in here because taking on
that task, that's the most daunting task. Just a few years out from
slavery, a decade or so out from slavery, and
right into the heart of the beast. Now the only way you could
do this is you have to be a warrior, you have to
have courage, you have to be dauntless. You have to be so
mission oriented. And he had to suffer the
indignities that a black person had to suffer
during that time and yet he continued
on his journey. That's the real power,
that's the real spirit within. Edie Powell: I think after
a while you can get very frustrated and do
something else. But he didn't and that is
I think his own core of he never wavered from what
his own commitment was in the very beginning. When Carver arrived in the
South, there were roughly five million black
farmers there. Only about one-fifth of
them owned any land. Almost all of them
shared a common problem, overreliance on cotton as
the region's main cash crop, together with the
sharecropper system used to produce it, which
depleted the soil and kept tenant farmers in a
permanent state of impoverishment. Improving the practice of
Southern agriculture and the lot of poor farmers
became Carver's chief concern. ♪♪ ♪♪ Gary Kremer: I think that Carver quickly recognized,
whatever preconceptions he had about the South when
he went down there, he quickly recognized the
enormity of the challenges he faced. And so I think he
concluded very quickly that he had to come up
with some practical ways that would improve the
lives of mostly the tenant farmers and the
sharecroppers who were living in the South. And he tried to impact
their lives in tangible, specific ways that would
help them on a day-to-day basis. Carver began urging
farmers to rotate crops and to use organic
fertilizers. He preached the value of
planting soil-restoring crops such as peanuts,
sweet potatoes, black-eyed peas and soybeans. Mark Hersey: He adapts it
to the circumstance and develops a very different
version of what scientific agriculture should be, one
that emphasizes ecological thinking to a degree that
very few, maybe no other progressive era
endeavors did. In the late 1930s he looks
back over his career and says, my work is
that of conservation. And what did he
mean by that? What would change about
the way we understand America's conservation
tradition if we took him seriously, if we look at
his work as a part of that broader American tradition
of conservation? He issued bulletins that
uneducated farmers could understand, explaining how
these soil-restoring crops should be grown and what
they could be used for. He devised a traveling
demonstration wagon called the Jesup wagon and
traveled dusty roads to teach small groups of
farmers how to improve their lives. "Start where you are with
what you have," he would say. "Make something of it. Never be satisfied." Luther Williams: He demonstrated in a
prophetic manner two major current problems, the need
for sustainability and conservation. ♪♪ Everywhere Carver went, he
had this innate ability to connect with people of
all creeds, cultures and colors. He had an effect on those
he met, as they had an effect on him. They learned
from one another. The community of Tuskegee
was no different. Frank Godden: He wanted to
know everything about me, my background, my mother,
my father, my sisters and brothers. And from that time we got
to be very good friends. Dyann Robinson: He liked
fat back and my daddy would, that was
his specialty. And his friend, Mr.
Parker, Felton Parker, was a baker but he also
was a barber and he used to cut Carver's hair. And so Mr. Parker and my
dad were both proud of knowing Carver and being
able to do a little something for him. They respected
him, oh yes. My dad was so proud that
he took fat back to Carver. Melonese Robinson: He had
to have his dinner at twelve o'clock. If it was not there
he would not eat it. But one day a mother came
in preeclampsia, she was pregnant. Well, he didn't get his
dinner at twelve noon that day. He got it at one o'clock. I told him why I was late. I said, a mother came in
preeclampsia, she was in a coma and Dr. Mitchell
called us to the operating room and that's why
your dinner is late. "Well, I would not be in
the world if it had not been for a female, my
mother." He ate his dinner. Sceiva Holland: She always
said that Dr. Carver was such a gentle person,
so kind, so caring. And I said, well mama,
how do you figure that? She said, well he would
stop, he would talk, he would take time. Thousands of letters from
the famous and unknown flooded Carver's modest
office at the Tuskegee Institute. Peter Burchard: People
would write him about problems with their farms
and their crops and almost anything. He seemed to be able to
answer any question in the universe. He wrote more than 25,000
letters in his life. Well, he would receive
all these letters, six or eight or ten, and he would
read them at night, go to sleep and he believed that
the problems were worked out while he was asleep
in his subconscious. And it seemed to work
because his letters are full of insightful
answers. Ken Quinn: When I visited
Tuskegee University I had the remarkable opportunity
to stay in George Washington Carver's suite. And I realized how long he
was there, half a century. And I think of how many
students he interacted with and influenced and
how many of those who were involved in the extension
work all throughout the South as part of reaching
out to all the black farming families. When you think about all
those years, all those people, I don't know if
that gets highlighted to the extent that it should. ♪♪ ♪♪ Most
agreed that Carver was a gifted teacher, whether in
the classroom or in the field, who instilled
a sense of wonder and curiosity in his students. Gary Kramer: I interviewed
a number of his former students. Admittedly they
were quite elderly. But they had a great
admiration for him as a teacher. I don't think he was a
conventional teacher who stood before class
and lectured. One former student of his
described him to me as being like Socrates. He said he would never
tell you anything, he would force you to work
for answers yourself. And I think that is why
students found him so challenging and
interesting. And there's abundant
evidence that he spent enormous amounts of time
with students and that even after students
left he maintained correspondences with them. And a lot of these
letters, and I've read many of them, are
addressed to him as Dear Daddy, Dear
Father, Dear Dad. And he would often sign
these letters as Your Father. He never married and
never had children. I think his students were
his surrogate children in that regard. Melonese Robinson: Just a
simple individual, wasn't hard to talk to, just
as kind and nice. You would think he would,
being a genius, you would think he would kind of be
a little standoffish, a little selfish, not
kind and not polite. He just acted like
a real human being. Frank Godden: You must get
an education and you must do this and you
must do that. And he really affected
my life greatly. At administration and
faculty politics, Carver was less adept. Booker T. Washington, perhaps the
nation's most influential black man in the early
years of the 20th century, was increasingly
away from the campus. Carver found himself
embroiled in bitter rivalries that eventually
would cost him the chairmanship of the
agriculture department. Gary Kremer: Carver
expected total deference. He didn't expect anybody
to question his decisions or his actions. And so as a consequence of
that I think they clashed. Dana Chandler: Carver quit
Tuskegee several times, he sent in his resignation. It never was accepted. (laughs) But Carver
believed in the work at Tuskegee to the point that
when he died he left his entire fortune
to Tuskegee. ♪♪ He stayed, in
large part, because of his loyalty to his adopted
region and its struggling farmers, and to the
hundreds of earnest students, his "children",
who idolized him. As his tenure at Tuskegee
approached two decades, George Washington Carver
was well-known and respected throughout
the South and among agriculturalists in other
areas of the country. Then, in late 1915, an
event took place that put Carver on the path to
international stardom. Booker T. Washington
unexpectedly died. Peter Burchard: They
had a new president. Washington had only called
himself the Principal. He had never said he
was the President. But the new person, Robert
Russo Moton, called himself the President. He was very good but
things changed a lot for Carver as soon as
Moton took over. Carver was starting to
want to withdraw into his laboratory a
little bit more. And he pretty much told
the new president that he was going to do that. He didn't really ask. And he went along with it. So, suddenly Carver was
able to control his own destiny. Within a year he had been
elected to the board of the National Agricultural
Society and became the first black man to be
elected a fellow in Britain's Royal Society
for the Encouragement of the Arts. Yet, few of Carver's
inventions ever found wide use, and only three ideas
were patented, two for paint produced from clays
and one for cosmetics, leading some to question
Carver's scientific legacy. Frank Godden: He had a
probing mind of developing things and he didn't care
anything about money. The auditor was on him
all the time to cash his checks. Dr. Walter Hill: One way
to look at Carver's works is just to think about him
being the integrator of research and extension
and coming up with the multiple uses of peanuts,
of ways of dealing with the boll weevil, crop
rotations, which some people may say that's not
science because it's not basic. But it is real in terms of
applying sciences that are going to serve society. There is a real role
for applied research. It does not have
to justify itself. Dana Chandler: That has
always been a puzzle to me is that people have
claimed that Carver wasn't a good scientist or wasn't
a scientist because they never could find any of
his works to prove it. Well, we have those works. They dispel any of that. They are replete with any
numbers of calculations, observations, he uses the
scientific method over and over again. That alone should
settle the issue. Edie Powell: I think in
everything he did he said he was searching for the
truth, that's what science is about. So, I think he was true
to himself and he never wavered from what
he really believed. Carver came to prominence
around 1920 for his work with peanuts, which
eventually led to his creation of over 300
products from the plant. Peter Burchard: He said
that one time a woman came and said, Mr. Carver, I
planted all these peanuts, and now what am I
going to do with them? And he said, I had a sort
of stupid look on my face and I said, well
I'll think about it. And he went back to his
laboratory and that is the famous story of when he
sat out in the woods and said, Mr. Creator, asked
him what he should do. And the Creator said,
well what do you want? And he said, I want to
know all about nature, something very broad. And the Creator said,
that's far too big a question for you, little
man, you must narrow it down, increase the intent
and decrease the extent. And Carver said, well how
about knowing about the peanut. And he said that the
Creator said, well that's a little bit more your
size but it's still infinite. So, Carver set to work
and created hundreds of products out of the
peanut and this was a demonstration, this was to
say, look what you can do. His peanut work intrigued
people and so became the main feature of
his public persona. Sometimes, his message of
planting soil building crops got lost in all the
attention he received on that one phase
of his work. ♪♪ And there were
other factors working against the world
hearing his message. Mark Hersey: It's
ultimately the political economy of the South that
causes Carver's campaign to fail and this is
because no matter how good his ideas were, and his
ideas were very good, they were very ecologically
sound and they could make a difference and I would
argue that in some ways they did make
a difference. So there were maybe 150 or
so black farmers who owned their own land in Macon
County in 1896 when Carver shows up. There are more than 500
by World War I, which is basically when Carver's
campaign, at least as a protracted effort,
comes to a close. Now that is not all due
to Carver's work, but Carver's campaign
contributed to this growth. But ultimately the deeply
entrenched racism of the Jim Crow South meant that
Carver's plan had little hope of working
in the long-term. ♪♪ Throughout the
1920s and 1930s, Carver gained
ever-increasing fame. He was offered jobs by
well-known individuals. The inventor, Thomas
Edison, offered him a $100,000 salary to come
work in his lab in New Jersey. But he turned it down to
stay among his people. He befriended leaders
from around the world. In 1937, Carver met
business mogul Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan at a
meeting of pioneers in the chemurgy movement,
a branch of applied chemistry that was
concerned with preparing industrial products
from agricultural raw materials. Over the next few years,
Ford and Carver visited each other back and forth
and remained in close contact. Peter Burchard: Henry Ford
picked Carver's brain at every opportunity
he could get. Ford had a big plantation
in Ways, Georgia. He actually built a school
on the property and called it the George Washington
Carver school, had Carver come over and dedicate it
and whenever they met they would walk around and Ford
would just keep feeding Carver with questions one after
the other to try to find out how to use
certain crops. Frank Godden: The last
time Henry Ford visited him, he was in Dorothy
Hall and he was living on the second floor. And it was difficult going
up and down those stairs. And Henry Ford called
on Montgomery to get an elevator company to come
out and he put an elevator in Dorothy Hall from the
first floor to the second floor for Dr. Carver. Henry Ford thought
a lot of Dr. Carver. ♪♪ ♪♪ To
African-Americans, Carver had become living proof
of a black man who had overcome great difficulty
and achieved greatness. Simon Estes: I have
experienced a lot of discrimination that he
experienced and I admired him because of the
obstacles with which he was confronted. And he did all of
this with grace, with determination, with courage,
never bitterness. So he was a great
model for me to try to exemplify. Dyann Robinson: He was
trying to bring this whole group of people
up from nothing. ♪♪ To many Southern
whites, Carver showed the brilliance and the heart
that wordlessly challenged the system of
sharp segregation. To those working for
racial harmony, he exemplified their ideal. Carver subscribed
to Booker T. Washington's views, which
held that blacks should attain an economic
foothold before trying to tear down social and
political barriers. They had their critics. African-American
scholar W.E.B. DuBois, the first black
person to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University,
condemned what he described as their
unwillingness to challenge white racism. Gary Kremer: I think
it is very complicated. Both men were born into
slavery, DuBois was not. And I think they simply
tried to do the best they could with the
understanding that they had at the time. Carver has been
criticized for being an accomodationist. One historian, Louis
Harlan, in a book about Booker T., described
Carver as "outbookering Booker". I think that's
unfair to both men. I think that Carver
struggled with this all of his life. And we're still
struggling with it today. Luther Williams: I think
Carver's, if you want to call it such,
revolutionary disposition was creativity, was
discovery, not activism in the social
political context. Could he have done
more in that regard? Yes. But I think he was
made differently. ♪♪ In 1938, when
Carver was 74, he was diagnosed with pernicious
anemia and was hospitalized for
almost a year. As soon as he could, he
returned to experiments in his laboratory, preparing
his legacy in the Carver Museum at Tuskegee and
establishing the George Washington Carver
Foundation to carry on his work with needy farmers. ♪♪ George Washington
Carver died January 5, 1943 at around age 78 and
is buried on the Tuskegee campus near Booker T. Washington. "He could have added
fortune to fame," his epitaph reads, "but caring
for neither he found happiness and honor in
being helpful to the world." ♪♪ Frank Godden: I was in the desert in North Africa. Edward R. Murrow, the distinguished
announcer, broadcasting from London. He said, Dr. George
Washington Carver, the distinguished scientist
from America, died today. It was sad, it was
very sad news to me. And so, that was the
last of Dr. Carver. ♪♪ Seventy five years
after his death, the world still looks to Carver
for inspiration. Students continue to
report on his life and thousands of people still
visit the places that honor him. His is a legacy
that defies time. ♪♪ Peter Burchard: In
1941 he opened all of his artwork to the public. He put on a big exhibition
and there had been nothing up to that time, all of
his works from Simpson College and a
few since then. People were stunned that
the fact that this great agricultural expert
chemist, botanist, etcetera, etcetera
was also an artist. A good friend of his who
was working, writing articles, she asked him
that question, Bess Walcott. She said, how have you
been able to do many things? And he said, would it
surprise you if I told you I have only been
doing one thing? And he said, Tennyson,
Alfred Lord Tennyson, the English poet, was working
at the same job and he picked up a little plant,
tiny plant in his hand with the roots still on it
and soil clinging to the roots and he quoted
Tennyson, "Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck
you out of the crannies. I hold you here root
and all in my hand. Little flower, but if I
could understand what you are root and all and all
in all I should know what God and man is." And this
really was the core of Carver's thinking. He said Tennyson
was seeking truth. That's what the artist is
seeking, that's what the scientist is seeking and
that is what I have been doing all of my life. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Funding for George
Washington Carver: An Uncommon Life is brought
to you by -- ♪♪ Wherever your operation takes you or who
you share it with we'll be where we've been all
along, with you from the word go. ♪♪ The Wallace
Genetic Foundation. ♪♪ The Alliant
Energy Foundation. ♪♪ And by the
Des Moines Community Playhouse. ♪♪
Reminds me of that Marc Maron bit where he's talking about not being able to remember "peanut guy's" name
Ah yes, George Washington Carver. Every February we would watch the movie our school district had.
MLK was a little too radical for us.
Thanks to him all children know who invented the peanut.
The Man Who Talks With the Flowers was such an awesome and inspiring read.
I did my senior paper on George Washington Carver. Had a great time researching his life. Was an interesting fellow indeed.
A weed is a flower growing in the wrong place.
Uncommon indeed. It's not everyday you get to learn about the guy who cut up George Washington.
Eddie Murphy explained on SNL how George Washington Carver got ripped off.
“While Dr. Carver died penniless and insane, still trying to play a phonograph record with a peanut.” I think about this line every time I hear about Carver. It was from an SNL skit by Eddie Murphy doing a black history minute skit.