Another look at Carver’s legacy
Iusually write about Black History Month each year. However, I am still drawn to the letter that I wrote last year about George Washington Carver.
If it was not for Mr. Skidmore, I would not have been aware of Carver’s entire history. In review, I was aware of Carver’s many things that he did with the peanut, but I was not aware of each step Carver not being successful without white people.
In review, I wrote: Carver met “… the Milhollands, a white couple who profoundly influenced his life and who he later credited with encouraging him to pursue higher education.” Etta Budd, a white teacher, “… encouraged Carver to study botany and pushed him to enroll at Iowa State, the agricultural college in Ames…” Carver’s white professors “…encouraged him to stay on as a graduate student… Working with L.H. Pammel, [white professor] a noted mycologist, Carver honed his talent at identifying and treating plant diseases. (https://www.acs.org/education)
Carver “…traveled widely and spoke frequently and convinced many wealthy and prominent people to donate money [such as] Andrew Carnegie, Collis Huntington, and John D. Rockefeller.”
Carver developed techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. Together with other agricultural experts, he urged farmers to restore nitrogen to their soils by practicing systematic crop rotation: alternating cotton crops with plantings of sweet potatoes or legumes, such as peanuts, soybeans and cowpeas. These crops both restored nitrogen to the soil and were good for human consumption.
Following the crop rotation practice resulted in improved cotton yields and gave farmers alternative cash crops. To train farmers to successfully rotate and cultivate the new crops, Carver developed an agricultural extension program for Alabama that was similar to the one at Iowa State.
To encourage better nutrition in the South, he widely distributed recipes using the alternative crops. Also, “on a one-half acre plot Carver increased the yield of sweet potatoes in a few years from 40 bushels to 266 bushels.” When land reverted to cotton after planting legumes, the yields increased significantly.
Think about the number of Blacks who were denied opportunities due to racism. I have believed that cancer could have been eliminated long ago, but somewhere a minority person was denied the opportunity to become a doctor due to his/her race.
This proves that it takes everybody working together to succeed, and it takes a discussion of racism for that to occur.
Vincent White Lancaster