The trendy, independent farmer who delivers your weekly farm share may have more in common with George Washington Carver — a man better known today for doing strange things with peanuts — than you might realize. Yet today's environmental and sustainable farming movements owe a lot to the innovative Black scientist.
Carver was born in Missouri at the end of the Civil War. After emancipation, he was raised by the same couple, Moses and Susan Carver, who had previously owned him as a slave. He managed — not without some difficulty — to get an education. After studying art and piano at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, he transferred to what is now Iowa State University, earning a bachelor’s in agriculture and a master's degree.
Carver was a brilliant scientist, and his alma mater made him a generous offer of employment. But Carver wasn’t in it for the money; he ...
