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Childhood

      On July 12,1864, Diamond Grove Missouri George Washington Carver was born into a family of slaves on the Moses Carver farm.He was weak and sickly as a child and was never able to work as hard as others. He and his mother were kidnapped and most likely taken to Arkansas by confederate night-raiders. After the war Moses found and reclaimed George, but his mother was never heard of. The Carvers raised George as their own child. It was then that George fell in love with nature and got his nickname " the plant doctor." At the age of twelve he left the home of his adopted parents and began his formal education in Newton County in Southwest Missouri where he worked as a farm hand. He later attended Minneapolis High School in Kansas.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Adulthood

                     Because of the racial barrier Carver had a hard time getting accepted into a collage. At the age of 30 Carver was accepted into and attended Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, as the first African American student, however there were no science classes for him to attend. But Carver had his heart set on a science career so he left Simpson collage for Iowa Agricultural College in 1891. He later obtained a  Bachelor Science degree in 1894 and a Master of Science degree in bacterial botany and agriculture in 1897. He went on to become the first African American faculty member at Iowa state collage of  Agriculture and Mechanics. Soon after Booker T. Washington came to Carver and convinced him to serve as a school's director in agriculture at Tuskegee in the south. It was at Tuskegee where George came up with his idea for crop rotation, which helped revolutionize the south. He taught the farmers to alternate the depleting cotton crops with soil enriching crops such as peanuts,sweat potatoes, soy beans and pecans.  
                    Carver convinced the southern farmers to follow his plans which would help the region to recover it's loss of crops. During World War I, he found a way to replace the textile dyes, producing over 500 shades. In 1927 he created a processes which created paints and stains from soy beans for which he received 3 patents. However he did not patent or profit from most of his ideas and inventions saying " God gave them to me, how can i sell them to someone else?"In 1940, Carver donated his life savings to the establishment of the Carver Research Foundation at Tuskegee, for continuing research in agriculture. He died January 5, 1943 in Tuskegee, Alabama after creating over 500 peanut products and hundreds more soy bean, sweat potato and pecan products. He was honored by state and federal government as well as nations worldwide and is one of the few black inventors recognized by mainstream American's today.


              bellis, mary. "George Washington Carver ." about.com. Web. 17 Feb 2010.                 <http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventors/a/GWC.htm>.
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