Earlier this year, I attended Making Brooklyn Bloom at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. I had the pleasure of getting to hear Onika Abraham’s powerful talk. The talk was in the spirit of Sankofa, to memorialize Kristopher Morgan Powell, local Bronx historian who passed away last winter. He was the creator and writer for Bronx River Sankofa. Sankofa is an Akan word used in Ghana that translates to “go back and fetch it”. She explained that this word is from a proverb stating “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten” which is to represent the importance from learning from the past.
In our first edition of Scientist Spotlight, I'd like to highlight an important scientist from the past whom Ms. Abraham also spoke about in her talk: George Washington Carver.
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| George Washington Carver |
George Washington Carver was born in 1864 in Missouri. His mother was a slave owned by Susan and Moses Carver. When George was just a baby, his mother was kidnapped by slave raiders. Around this same time that he became an orphan, slavery was abolished with the 13th amendment. The Carver’s raised George and his brother James. As George got older and wanted an education, he had to travel in order to find it because there were no schools for black children where they lived.
He eventually became the first African-American to study at Iowa State Agricultural College in 1891. He combined his love for art and science to study botany. He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1894 and a graduate degree in 1896. His bachelor’s thesis was “Plants as Modified by Man”. His graduate studies included in depth work on plant pathology.
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| George working in his lab. |
Carver excelled in his studies and became the first African-American expert in his field. He was contacted by Booker T. Washington to head the agricultural department at the all-black Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Here, Carver conducted agricultural research and also conducted “some of his most significant work–seeking solutions to the burden of debt and poverty that enmeshed landless black farmers.” (1) His goal was to fix the relentless cycle of debt and poverty experienced by black farmers dependent upon sharecropping and cotton.
In the effort to create more economically sustainable lives for poor farmers, Carver pioneered a mobile classroom to bring lessons on better farming practices to the farms.
He “gave demonstrations on such topics as using native clays for paints, increasing soil fertility without commercial fertilizers, and growing alternative crops along with the ubiquitous cotton. To enhance the attractiveness of such crops as cow peas, sweet potatoes, and peanuts, Carver developed a variety of uses for each. Peanuts especially appealed to him as an inexpensive source of protein that did not deplete the soil as much as cotton did”. (1)
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| Mobile Classroom |
As he became more widely known, he used his fame to travel through the South to promote racial equality.Carver later became more famous for his work with peanuts and peanut oil, which became widely used in massage for people with medical issues, such as polio. He was thought to ‘have the cure’ and people from all over sought him out.
During the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, “people from all over the world asked Carver for agricultural advice because he was able to show farmers how to maximize plant production and improve the soil at very little cost”. (2)
George Washington Carver, born into the most unfortunate circumstances, lived a frugal life dedicated to helping improve the lives of others. On his grave was written, He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.
In the spirit of Sankofa, I think George Washington Carver represents an important part of the past which we should look back and learn from.
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| A painting by Betsy Graves Reyneau of Carver cross pollinating flowers. |
1- http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/george-washington-carver
More info from :
http://www.biography.com/people/george-washington-carver-9240299#tuskegee-institute
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