George Washington Carver

Delice Bette | October 19, 2022

Summary

George Washington Carver (January 5, 1864-January 5, 1943) was an African American scientist, botanist, mycologist, educator, and inventor who worked on the concept of agricultural extension at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee (he is believed to have been born in January 1864, before slavery was abolished in Missouri. He taught freed slaves the farming techniques necessary for them to become self-sufficient.

Much of Carver”s fame is based on his research and promotion of alternative crops to cotton such as peanuts and sweet potatoes. He wanted poor farmers to grow crops in alternative ways as a source of their own food and other products to improve their quality of life. The most popular of his 44 practical newsletters for farmers contains 105 food recipes using peanuts. He also created or disseminated about 100 peanut products that were useful for the home and farm, including cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, gasoline and nitroglycerin.

In the Reconstruction South, agricultural monoculture of cotton had depleted the soil, and in the early 20th century the cotton boll weevil destroyed much of the cotton crop. Carver”s work on peanuts was intended to provide an alternative crop.

In addition to his work in agricultural extension education for purposes of promoting sustainable agriculture and appreciation of plants and nature, also among Carver”s important accomplishments were improving race relations, mentoring children, poetry, painting and religion. He served as an example of the importance of hard work, having a positive attitude and a good education. His humility, humanitarianism, good nature, frugality and rejection of economic materialism have also been widely admired.

One of his most important roles was in undermining, through the fame of his achievements and talents, the widespread stereotype of the time that the black race was intellectually inferior to the white race. In 1941, Time magazine called him a “Negro Leonardo,” a reference to the Italian all-rounder Leonardo da Vinci. To commemorate his life and inventions, George Washington Carver Recognition Day is celebrated on January 5, the anniversary of Carver”s death.

Carver was born into slavery in Diamond Grove, Newton County, Marion Township, near Crystal Place, now known as Diamond, Missouri, possibly in 1864 or 1865, although the exact date is unknown. His owner, Moses Carver, was a German-American immigrant who had purchased George”s mother, Mary, and his father, Giles from William P. McGinnis on October 9, 1855 for $700. Carver had 10 sisters and one brother, who died prematurely.

When George was only a week old, he, a sister and his mother were kidnapped by night raiders from Arkansas. George”s brother James was taken to safety from kidnappers who sold slaves in Kentucky, a common practice in those days. Moses Carver hired John Bentley to find them, but found George alone, orphaned and near death from whooping cough. Carver”s mother and sister died, although some of the reports of the time mention that they went with the northern soldiers. Moses negotiated with the raiders and traded them a racehorse for the boy”s return and rewarded Bentley. This episode caused George to suffer from respiratory illness for the rest of his life, leaving him in a state of chronic weakness.

After slavery was abolished, Moses Carver and his wife Susan adopted George and his brother James as their own children. They encouraged George Carver to pursue his intellectual pursuits and “Aunt Susan” taught him the basics of reading and writing.

Negroes were not allowed in the school at Diamond Grove, but were allowed ten miles (16 km) south of Neosho and when he received word that there was a school for Negroes, he resolved to go immediately. To his dismay, when he arrived in town, the school had closed for the night, as he had no place to stay, he slept in a nearby barn. The next morning, he found a kind woman, Mariah Watkins, who helped him by renting him a room. When he identified himself as “George de Carver,” as he had done all his life, she replied that henceforth his name was “George Carver.” George was delighted and impressed with this lady”s words, “You should learn all you can, then go back out into the world and give your learning back to the people.”

At the age of thirteen, due to his desire to attend high school there, he re-housed with another family in Fort Scott, Kansas. After witnessing the lynching of a black man by a group of white men, George left Fort Scott and subsequently attended a series of schools before earning his diploma at Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas.

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University

For the next five years he sent letters to different colleges in an attempt to be accepted, and was finally successful with Highland College located in Highland, Kansas. He traveled to the University, but upon arriving there he was rejected when he discovered that he was black. In August 1886, Carver traveled in a wagon with J. F. Beeler from Highland to Eden Township in Ness County, where he applied to the government for land under the Rural Settlement Act near Beeler, where he maintained a small conservatory of plants, flowers and a geological collection. Without any help from domestic animals he plowed 17 acres (69,000 m²) of the land, planting rice, grains, corn and vegetables, as well as various fruit trees, forest trees, and shrubs. He also did small jobs in town and worked as a cowboy.

In early 1888, Carver obtained a $300 loan from the Ness City Bank, indicating that he wanted to continue his education, and in June of that year he left the area.

In 1890, Carver began studying art and piano at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa where his art teacher, Etta Budd, recognized Carver”s talent for painting flowers and plants, convinced him to abandon his studies and interests in art and pursue a better paying occupation, and for this reason he went to study botany at Iowa State University in Ames. He transferred there in 1891 as the first black student and later the first black faculty member. To avoid confusion with another George Carver in his classes, he began using his full name as George Washington Carver.

By the end of his career in 1894, his potential was already beginning to be recognized, Joseph Budd and Louis Pammel convinced George to stay in Iowa and earn his master”s degree. Carver conducted his research at the Iowa Agricultural and Economic Experiment Station under the direction of Professor Pammel from 1894 until his graduation in 1896. In his work he experimented with plant pathologies and mycology gaining national recognition and respect as a botanist.

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In Tuskegee with Booker T. Washington

In 1896, Carver was invited to head the Tuskegee Agricultural Research Department, later renamed Tuskegee University, by its founder, Booker T. Washington. Carver accepted the position and remained there for 47 years, teaching former slaves farming techniques for self-sufficiency. techniques for self-sufficiency.

In response to Washington”s directive to bring education to farmers, Carver designed a mobile school, called the “Jesup wagon,” after the New York financier designed a mobile school, called the “Jesup wagon,” after New York financier Morris Ketchum Jesup Morris Ketchum Jesup, provided funding. funding.

Carver had numerous problems at Tuskegee before he became famous; his arrogance, his higher than normal salary and the two rooms he received for his personal use left some people resentful since faculty members normally shared rooms between two. One of Carver”s duties was to manage the farms at the Agricultural Experiment Station. They expected him to produce and sell farm products for profit but he soon proved to be a poor manager. In 1900, Carver complained that the physical labor and letter writing that his farm work required was too much for him.

In 1902, Booker T. Washington invited Frances Benjamin Johnston, a nationally famous photographer, to Tuskegee. Carver and Nelson Henry, a graduate of Tuskegee, accompanied the attractive white woman to the city of Ramer Tuskegee graduate, accompanied the attractive white woman to the town of Ramer where several white citizens thought Henry had gone to the white citizens thought Henry had gone to associate with the white woman. Someone fired three pistol shots at Henry, and he fled. three pistol shots at Henry, and fled then a mob of people prevented him from returning. Carver considered himself Carver considered himself lucky to have escaped with his life.

In 1904, a committee reported that Carver”s reports in the poultry yard were exaggerated, and Washington criticized him about those exaggerations. were exaggerated and Washington criticized him regarding those exaggerations. Carver responded by saying, “To now be branded as a liar and a party to such a horrid deception as is more than than I can bear, and if your committee feels that I have deliberately lied or was a party to this lie as they were told, my resignation is at your disposal. “In 1910, Carver submitted a letter of resignation in response to the reorganization of the agricultural programs.Carver again threatened to Carver again threatened to resign in 1912 for teaching assignment. In 1913 he submitted a letter of resignation, intending to head an experimental station elsewhere. He also threatened to resign in 1913 and to resign in 1913 and 1914 when he failed to get a summer in his teaching assignment. In each case, Washington each case, Washington smoothed things over, it seemed that his wounded pride prompted most of his threats to resign, especially in 1913 and 1914. his threats of resignation, especially in the latter two, because he did not need the money from the summer job.

In 1911, Washington wrote a long letter to Carver complaining that he had not followed orders to plant certain crops at the experiment station. He also rejected Carver”s demands for a new research laboratory and supplies for his exclusive use and to teach without classes. He complimented Carver”s abilities in his pedagogical and original research, but bluntly commented on his poor administrative skills: “When it comes to the organization of classes, the ability necessary to insure that a school is properly organized and of large size or a section of a school, his ability leaves much to be desired. When it comes to the question of running a farm in a practical way that will secure definitely, practical and financial results, again his ability leaves much to be desired.” Also in 1911, Carver complained that his laboratory was still without the equipment promised 11 months earlier. At the same time, he complained about the committees criticizing him and that his “nerves would not stand” any more committee meetings.

Despite their clashes, Booker T. Washington praised Carver in the 1911 book My Larger Education: Being Chapters from My Experience. Washington called him “one of the greatest black scientists I have ever known. Like most later biographies of Carver, it also contains exaggerations, which incorrectly alleged that from a young age Carver, “proved to be such a weak and sickly little creature that no attempt was made to put him to work, instead he was allowed to grow up among chickens and other animals around the servants” quarters, managing to live as best he could.” Carver wrote elsewhere that his adoptive parents, the Carvers, were “very kind” to him.

Booker T. Washington died in 1915. His successor made fewer demands on Carver and from 1915 to 1923, Carver”s main objectives were to compile existing uses and propose new ones for peanuts, potatoes, nuts, and other crops. This work and especially his promotion of peanuts to the peanut growers association and before Congress was what ultimately made him the most famous African American of his time.

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Rise to fame

From the beginning of his activity, he intended to help poor ranchers and farmers in the south who were working on poor quality soils that had been depleted of nutrients by repeated plantings of cotton crops. He and other agricultural specialists encouraged farmers to restore nitrogen in their soils by systematically practicing crop rotation, alternating cotton crops with sweet potato or legume (such as peanuts, soybeans and cowpeas) plantations that were also a source of protein. Following the practice of crop rotation resulted in improvements in cotton production, as well as new farm feed products and alternative industrial crops. In order to successfully train farmers to rotate crops and grow the new food products, Carver developed an agricultural extension program for Alabama that was similar to one in the state of Iowa, plus he founded an industrial research laboratory where he and his assistants worked to popularize the use of the new plants by developing hundreds of applications for them through original research and also by promoting recipes and applications they picked up from others. Carver distributed his information as agricultural newsletters.

Much of Carver”s fame is related to the hundreds of vegetable products he popularized; after his death, lists of vegetable products he had compiled or originated were created. These lists enumerated some 300 uses for peanuts and 118 for sweet potatoes, although 73 of the 118 were dyes. He made similar investigations for uses of cowpeas, soybeans, and nuts. Carver did not write formulas for most of his novel products so that they could not be made by others.

Until 1921, Carver was not widely known for his agricultural research, however, he was known in Washington, D.C. by President Theodore Roosevelt who publicly admired his work, by James Wilson, a former dean of Iowa State University and Carver”s teacher, was secretary of agriculture from 1897 to 1913, also by Henry Wallace Cantwell, secretary of agriculture from 1921 to 1924, who was one of Carver”s teachers at Iowa State. Carver was a friend of Wallace”s son, Henry A. Wallace, also a graduate of the University of Iowa. Wallace as a young man served as secretary of agriculture from 1933 to 1940 and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as vice president from 1941 to 1945.

Carver was also contacted by American businessman, farmer and inventor, William Edenborn of Winn Parish, Louisiana, who grew peanuts on his demonstration farm.

In 1916 Carver was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in England, one of the few Americans at the time to receive this honor. However, his promotion of peanuts earned him much of his fame.

In 1919, Carver wrote to a peanut company about the great potential he saw for his new peanut milk, both he and the peanut industry seemed unaware of the fact that in 1917 William Melhuish had secured patent #1,243,855 for a milk substitute made from peanuts and soybeans. Despite reservations about his race, the peanut industry invited him to be a speaker at their 1920 convention where he discussed “the possibilities of peanuts” and exhibited 145 peanut products.

In 1920, U.S. peanut farmers were being undercut with imported peanuts from the Republic of China, white peanut processors and farmers gathered in 1921 to plead their cause before a congressional hearing committee on a tariff. Already having spoken on the issue at the United Peanut Associations of America, Carver was chosen to speak in favor of a peanut tariff before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee. Carver was a novel choice because of racial segregation in the United States, although on his arrival, he was mocked by the surprised southern congressmen, but he was not discouraged and began to explain some of the many uses for peanuts. He initially had ten minutes to present, but the now fascinated committee extended his time again and again. The committee rose in applause so he finished his presentation, and the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922 included a tax on imported peanuts. Carver”s presentation to Congress made him famous, while his intelligence, eloquence, kindness and courtesy charmed the general public.

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Life in fame

During the last two decades of his life, Carver seemed to enjoy his celebrity status, often finding himself on the road promoting racial harmony, peanuts and Tuskegee. Although he only published six agricultural newsletters after 1922, he also published articles in peanut industry magazines and wrote a syndicated column for a newspaper called, “Professor Carver”s Advice.” Many business leaders came to ask for his help, and he often responded to them with free advice. Three U.S. presidents (Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Roosevelt) met with him, and the crown prince of Sweden studied with him for three weeks.

In 1923, Carver received the NAACP”s Spingarn Medal, awarded annually for outstanding achievement. From 1923 to 1933, Carver toured Southern white colleges for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation.

A famous criticism of Carver was in a November 20, 1924, New York Times article called “Men of Science Never Talk Like That,” in which the Times considered Carver”s statements that God had guided him in his research incompatible with a scientific approach. The criticism generated much sympathy for Carver, because many Christians saw the article as an attack on religion.

In 1928, Simpson College awarded Carver an honorary doctorate and Raleigh H. Merritt contacted him about a 1929 book about him and wrote: “At present not much has been done to utilize Dr. Carver”s discoveries commercially. He says it merely scratches the surface of scientific research for the possibilities of peanuts and other Southern products.” However, in 1932, literature professor James Saxon Childers wrote that Carver and his products were almost solely responsible for the increase in U.S. peanut production after the cotton boll weevil devastated the cotton crop around 1892. Childers” 1932 article about Carver called “The Boy Who Was Traded for a Horse,” which was published in The American Magazine and reprinted in 1937 in Reader”s Digest, did much to establish this myth about Carver, and other major magazines and newspapers of the time exaggerated his impact on the peanut industry.

Between 1933 and 1935, Carver was largely engaged in work on peanut oil massage to treat infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis). Carver received enormous media attention and visits from parents with their sick children; however, it was ultimately found that peanut oil was not the miracle solution making the massages provide the benefits as Carver had been a coach for the Iowa State soccer team and had been qualified as a massage therapist. Between 1935 and 1937, Carver participated in the study of diseases for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and specialized in plant diseases and Mycology for his master”s degree.

In 1937, Carver participated in two chemotherapy conferences. He met Henry Ford at a conference in Dearborn, Michigan, and they became close friends. Also in 1937, Carver”s health declined. Time magazine reported in 1941 that Henry Ford had installed an elevator for Carver because his doctor had told him he could not climb the 19 stairs to his room. In 1942, the two denied that they were working together on a solution to the wartime rubber shortage. Carver also worked with soybeans, which he and Ford considered an alternative fuel.

In 1939, Carver received the Roosevelt Medal for outstanding contribution to southern agriculture with the inscription, “To a humble scientist seeking God”s direction and a deliverer for men of the white as well as the black race.” In 1940, Carver established the George Washington Carver Foundation at Tuskegee Institute. In 1941, The George Washington Carver Museum at Tuskegee Institute was dedicated in his honor. In 1942, Henry Ford built a replica of the old slave cabin that Carver lived in during his childhood at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn as a tribute to his friend. Also in 1942, Ford had dedicated the George Washington Carver Laboratory in Dearborn to him.

Returning home one day, he fell down the stairs and was found unconscious by a maid who rescued him and took him to a hospital, but Carver died in the hospital on January 5, 1943, at the age of 78 from complications (anemia) resulting from his fall. He was buried next to Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee University. Because of his frugality, his savings amounted to $60,000, which he donated in his later years and after his death to the Carver Museum and the George Washington Carver Foundation.

On his tomb it was written: “He could have added fortune to his fame, but as he was interested in neither one nor the other, he found happiness and honor by being useful to the world”.

Before and after his death, there was a movement to establish a national Carver memorial. However, due to World War II, expenditures not directed to the war effort were prohibited by presidential order. However, Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman sponsored a bill to establish the memorial. A committee heard about this bill and an advocate argued that: “The bill is not merely a momentary pause of men engaged in the conduct of the war, to honor one of the greatest Americans in this country, but in essence it is a blow against the Axis, it is a war measure in the sense that to further loosen the reins and release the energies of approximately 15. 000,000 Negroes in this country will serve the full support of our war effort.” The bill passed both houses without a single dissenting vote.

On July 14, 1943, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dedicated $30,000 for the George Washington Carver National Memorial southwest of Diamond, Missouri, on the site where Carver had spent part of his childhood. This was the first national monument dedicated to an African American and also the first not dedicated to a president. At this 210-acre (0.8 km²) national monument, there is a bust of Carver, a ¾-mile nature trail, a museum, Moses Carver”s 1881 home, and the Carver Cemetery. Due to a series of delays, the memorial was not opened until July 1953.

In December 1947, a fire broke out at the Carver Museum, and much of the collection was damaged by flames, heat, smoke, and water. Time magazine reported that all but three of the 48 Carver paintings in the Museum were destroyed. His best-known painting, which was shown at the 1893 World”s Fair in Chicago, has a yucca and cactus. This canvas survived, but blistering and smoke damage marred the surface of the work. It remains on display at the Museum, along with several of his other paintings, which have been preserved. Carver appeared on U.S. postage stamps in 1948 and 1998, and was depicted on a commemorative fifty-cent coin from 1951 to 1954. Two ships, the Liberty-class ship SS George Washington Carver and the nuclear-powered submarine USS George Washington Carver (SSBN-656) were named in his honor.

Since 1970 the lunar crater Carver has been named in his honor.

In 1977, Carver was elected to the Great American Hall of Fame. In 1990, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 1994, Iowa State University awarded Carver a Doctor of Humane Letters degree. In 2000, Carver was inducted as a member of the USDA Hall of Heroes with the name “Father of Chemotherapy”.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed George Washington Carver in his list of The 100 Greatest African Americans.

In 2005, Carver”s research at the Tuskegee Institute was designated a National Historic Landmark in Chemistry by the American Chemical Society. On February 15, 2005, an episode of Modern Marvels included scenes from inside Iowa State University”s Food Science Building and also about Carver”s work. In 2005, the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri, unveiled the George Washington Carver Garden in his honor, which includes a life-size statue of him.

Many institutions honor George Washington Carver to this day, especially the American public school system. Dozens of elementary and high schools bear his name. NBA star David Robinson and his wife, Valerie, founded a Carver Academy; the name was inaugurated on September 17, 2001, in San Antonio, Texas.

George Washington Carver is considered a reputed inventor, discoverer of over three hundred uses for peanuts and hundreds for soybeans, nuts and sweet potatoes. Among the catalogued items he suggested to southern farmers to help them economically were: adhesives, axle grease, lye, buttermilk, hot sauce, fuel briquettes (a biofuel), inks, instant coffee, linoleum, mayonnaise, meat tenderizer, metal polish, paper, plastic, pavement, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, talcum powder, and wood dyes. He went on to define three patents (however, they were not of great commercial success in the end. Apart from these patents and some food recipes, he left no formulas or procedures for the elaboration of his products. Curiously, he did not keep notes in a laboratory notebook, many people say that he did not take them and that he kept everything in his head.

It is a common misconception that Carver”s research into products that could be made by small farmers for their own use led to the commercial successes that revolutionized Southern agriculture, but in reality these products were intended as adequate substitutes for commercial products that were beyond the budget of the small farmer. Carver”s work of applying the scientific method to support small farmers and provide them with the resources to be as independent as possible of the cash economy foreshadowed the “appropriate technology” work of E. F. Schumacher.

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Peanut products

Dennis Keeney, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, wrote the following in the Leopold Letters newsletter:

Carver put some of its peanut products on the market. The Carver Penol Company sold a mixture of creosote and peanuts as a patent medicine for respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis. Other companies were The Carver Products Company and Carvoline Company. Carvoline Antiseptic Hair Dressing was a mixture of peanut oil and lanolin and Carvoline Rubbing Oil was a peanut oil for massage.

He is often credited with inventing peanut butter, a claim that has been cited for decades in some U.S. schools and educational programs. Although he may have made peanut butter during the time he studied peanuts, peanut butter has been around since the time of the Aztecs, which was produced from ground peanuts.

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Sweet potato products

Along with peanuts, Carver is also associated with sweet potato products. In his 1922 sweet potato bulletin he cataloged dozens of recipes.

The list of inventions made from Carver”s sweet potatoes was compiled from his records which include: 73 dyes, 17 wood fillings, 14 candies, 5 gruels, 5 breakfast foods, 4 starches, 4 flours, and 3 molasses. There are also listings for vinegar and seasoned vinegar, for dried coffee and instant coffee, for candies, after-dinner mints, orange drops, and lemon drops.

During his more than four-decade stay in Tuskegee, Carver”s official published work consisted mainly of 44 practical bulletins for farmers. His first bulletin in 1898 was on acorns for feeding farm animals. His last bulletin in 1943 was on peanuts. It also published six sweet potato bulletins, five on cotton, and four on cowpea. Several other individual bulletins dealt with alfalfa, wild plums, tomatoes, ornamentals, corn, poultry, dairying, swine, preserving meats in hot climates, and nature study in schools.

His most popular bulletin called, How to Grow Peanuts and 105 Ways of Preparing Peanuts for Human Consumption, was the first published in 1916 and was reprinted many times. It gave a brief overview of peanut crop production and contained a list of recipes from other agricultural newsletters, cookbooks, magazines and newspapers, such as Peerless Cookbook, Good Housekeeping and Berry”s Fruit Recipes. Carver is far from being the first American to make an agricultural newsletter devoted to peanuts, but his newsletters seemed to be far more popular and widespread than previous ones.

Science and God were areas of his interest and he never had ideas of war in his mind. He stated on many occasions that his faith in Jesus was the only mechanism by which he could effectively pursue and realize the art of science. George Washington Carver converted to Christianity when he was ten years old and while still a child, he was not expected to live past the age of 21 due to his visible lack of health. He lived well beyond the age of 21 and, as a result, his beliefs deepened. Throughout his career, he always found friendship and security in the fellowship of other Christians. He relied on them especially when he had to endure harsh criticism from the scientific community and the print media about his research methodology.

Dr. Carver saw faith in Jesus as the means of breaking down the barriers of racial disagreement and social stratification. He was as concerned with the character development of his students as he was with their intellectual development. He even compiled a list of eight cardinal virtues for his students to emulate and seek to follow:

Carver also taught Sunday catechism classes in Tuskegee for several students who requested them, beginning in 1906. In this class he would regularly tell the Bible stories by acting them out. His unconventional scientific methods and his ambitions as a teacher inspired as much criticism as praise. Dr. Carver expressed this sentiment in response to this phenomenon: “When you do common things in life in a way that is not common, you will command the attention of the world.”

George Washington Carver”s legacy of faith is included in many series of Christian books for children and adults that deal with great men and women of faith and the work they accomplished through their convictions respectively. One such series, The Sower, includes his story alongside those of such men as Isaac Newton, Samuel Morse, Johannes Kepler, and the Wright Brothers. Other Christian literary references that include him include Man”s Slave, God”s Scientist by David R. Collins and in the Heroes of the Faith series of books George Washington Carver: Inventor and Naturalist by Sam Wellman. Conservative Christian evangelist Pat Robertson frequently makes references in lectures, speeches and credits Carver”s merging of faith with science as an inspiration to the founder of Regent University.

In Cocoa (Florida), United States, from 1960 to 1963, in the final years of racial segregation in the South of the United States, there was the Carver Junior College, a two-year public college for blacks, who were forbidden to study in white colleges.

“George W. Carver. International Plant Names Index (IPNI). Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Harvard University Herbarium, and Australian National Herbarium (eds.).

Sources

1. George Washington Carver
2. George Washington Carver
3. http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2010/february/george-washington-carver-master-inventor-artist/
4. «About GWC: A Tour of His Life». George Washington Carver National Monument. National Park Service. Archivado desde el original el 1 de febrero de 2008. «George Washington no sabía la fecha exacta de su nacimiento, pero pensó que era en enero de 1864 (hay evidencias sobre julio 1861, pero no concluyente). Sabía que era en algún momento antes de la esclavitud abolida en Misuri, en enero 1865. »
5. a b Carver, George Washington. 1916. How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption. Tuskegee Institute Experimental Station Bulletin 31.
6. a b «Black Leonardo Book». Time Magazine. 24 de noviembre de 1941. Archivado desde el original el 28 de agosto de 2013. Consultado el 10 de agosto de 2008.
7. Pages 9–10 of George Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol by Linda McMurry, 1982. New York: Oxford University Press (ISBN 0-19-503205-5)
8. a b O Notable Names Database estabelece como 1860, citando o censo de 1870, que diz: “1864 é, frequentemente, citado como sendo seu ano de nascimento, mas no formulário do censo de 1870, preenchido por Moses e Susan Carver, ele é apresentado como tendo dez anos de idade.” [1].
9. Linda O. McMurry (1982). George Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 196. ISBN 0-19-503205-5
10. McMurry (1982), George Washington Carver, pp. 9–10.
11. McMurry, Linda O.. George Washington Carver: tudós és szimbólum. New York: Oxford University Press, 196. o. (1982). ISBN 0-19-503205-5. Hozzáférés ideje: 2017. február 16.  (angolul)
12. a b „Black Leonardo Book”, Time, 1941. november 24.. [2013. augusztus 28-i dátummal az eredetiből archiválva] (Hozzáférés ideje: 2017. február 14.)  (angolul)
13. McMurry (1982), George Washington Carver, 9–10. old
14. a b c Rennert, Richard, ed. (1994), Profiles of Great Black Americans: Pioneers of Discovery, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, pp. 26–32, ISBN 0-7910-2067-3 (angolul)
15. http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ca-Ch/Carver-George-Washington.html