George Washington Carver Summary

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George Washington Carver was a very resourceful man. Dr. Carver showed his resourcefulness when he returned to Alabama in 1896 to teach botany and chemistry. He solved problems that were life and death situations for farmers in the south. Mr. Carver had been hired to teach agricultural science at a new Alabama college for black students. Cotton was the cash crop in Alabama, as it was all over the south. But growing cotton, Carver knew, is hard on the soil. Carver showed the already set farmers a better way to grow cotton. He planted cow peas into the ground which take nitrogen from the air and put it back into the earth and he also spread muck from the nearby swamp on the ground as fertilizer. Soon enough he had bushy stalks of cotton that had everyone coming to look at. After that, slowly, the people began to listen to and trust the teacher from “up north” but were still not going to stop growing cotton as Dr. Carver advised. When tragedy hit Alabama in 1915 (the Boll Weevil ate the farmer stalks of cotton), the farmers had to change their stubborn ways and stop growing cotton. Dr. Carver experimented with many different types of plants but he realized the peanut plant could be the next cash crop. After Carver had experimented with the peanut plant, he found hundreds of ways to cook and eat peanuts. He engineered a dinner party based on only peanuts and got everyone on the band wagon. Soon after that Carver locked himself in the laboratory and developed dozens of salable peanut products including peanut butter and paper. Most importantly he discovered peanut oil. Peanut oil is now used for shampoo, glue, and even dyes. George Washington’s idea led to a new branch of science that is becoming more important than ever

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