28. attend a Chautauqua

An Evening with George Washington Carver

I went to two of Paxton Williams' programs this week about George Washington Carver as an artist and teacher so I've become pretty familiar with the life and times of Dr. Carver. But I still learned new things tonight and was able to pull together for myself a good chronology of his life.


Dr. Carver was raised by Moses and Susan Carver who had owned, as a slave, George's mother. The Carvers cared so much for George's family that when the infant George, his sister, and his mother were kidnapped by night raiders, they hired a soldier to track them down. Only George was found. After the war, the Carvers raised George and his remaining brother who had not been kidnapped as their own.

The kidnapping left George a sickly child. "Aunt Sue," as young George called Mrs. Carver, taught him to clean, sew, and tend a garden. People around Diamond Grove, Missouri noticed that he was good with plants. Aunt Sue also taught George to read and write, but he was unable, because of his race, to go to the school there.

To get more schooling, he went to Neosho, Missouri where another family took him in as long as he did well in school and helped out around the house. He called the woman of that household, "Aunt Mariah." He remembered many bits of advice from Aunt Mariah, including:

• find a cure for any ailment in nature


• lift as you climb


• go to church

From Neosho, he ended up in two different towns in Kansas. In one, he saw a man lynched, an incident that haunted him the rest of his life. In the other, he finished high school. After that he was accepted into Highland College in Kansas but was turned away from the door when they discovered he was black.

From there he homesteaded, worked as a chef in Iowa, studied art at Simpson College, and studied agriculture at Ames before taking the job at Tuskegee Institute that became his career and his life.

Tonight, our George Washington Carver said about racism that America is a bountiful nation, but it is also a wasteful nation. We throw away clothes that are out of style and plants that aren't growing precisely where we want them. We throw away people sometimes, too. We can make better use of our resources whether they are material goods, food items, or the minds and spirits of our citizens.