George Washington Carver

George Washington Carver

A Ruined Land George Washington Carver was shocked by what he saw from the window of the train. It was 1896, and families lived in crumbling shacks with cotton planted all the way up to the porch. The Alabama farmland was eroded and cracked. The cotton plants were as skinny and unhealthy as the children.

During the Civil War (1861-1865), many of the old plantations of the South had been destroyed. More than 600, 000 people had died during the fighting, leaving farms abandoned or not cared for. More than four million slaves had been freed, but most had no education and few skills to make a life for themselves. Thirty years after the war, many of the freed slaves could barely feed their families. Professor Carver had given up a good job teaching at an Iowa college to come to Alabama to help the struggling farmers. He would help them by teaching that too much of a good thing can become a bad thing. What was ruining their farms was too much cotton.

Born a Slave George was born in Missouri in 1864, during the Civil War. His mother was a slave, so George was born a slave, too. When George was a baby, night riders stole him and his mother. Moses and Susan Carver, the couple who owned them, sent a man to find them. He found George, but his mother was never seen again.

When the Civil War ended in 1865, George and his older brother, Jim, were freed. The Carvers gave the orphaned boys a home. Jim helped Moses in the fields, but George was often sick and stayed at home to help Susan. She taught him to read, write, and sew, but George liked best to garden and explore nature.

Learning on His Own George taught himself about the local plants and animals, but he wanted to go to school to learn even more. Many schools at that time were segregated, which meant that white and black students could not attend the same school. The local school did not allow black students, so when George was twelve, he left home to go to school. He lived with another couple, the Watkins, and worked for his meals and room. At thirteen, he moved to Kansas.