Heck Of A Guy

Observations Evoked By The Heck of a Guy George Washington Carver Posts

The following notes are tangents, asides, and other remnants that percolated to the surface of my cortex while I was working on the Carver posts.

Carver’s Influence On A Child’s Perception Of Blacks

Mrs. Linklater commented on one of the George Washington Carver posts:

My parallel experience was warped by the geodemographic quirk of growing up near the George Washington Carver National Monument in a rural area with almost no blacks in the population.

Except for two years of middle school and my freshman year of college, I lived in my hometown, Diamond, Missouri, until I was 21. During that time, the only black people residing in or near that town, frequenting the local stores, attending the consolidated school that drew students from the outlying farms several miles from the facility itself, or belonging to any of the numerous churches in town were the Superintendent of the George Washington Carver National Monument or members of his¹ family.

They stood out not only because they were black but also because, in a population almost devoid of college educated individuals other than teachers and some of the clergy, the Superintendents assigned by the National Park Service were college graduates. They and their families were also well spoken, typically well traveled, and, if my recall is accurate, usually hailed from urban environments, traits which distinctly atypical in my immediate environment

Consequently, I grew up with the impression that blacks were especially well educated and sophisticated. Such was life in the 50s - in Diamond, Missouri.

George Washington and George Washington Carver

All sources seem to agree that George Carver did not use a middle name in childhood or early adolescence.

The two prevalent accounts of how he acquired “Washington” as part of his name follow:

1. Wikipedia and others state that “In order to avoid confusion with another George Carver in his classes [at Iowa State University], he began to use the name George Washington Carver.”
2. Other sites, such as George Washington Carver, report that “In the spring of 1885 [6 years before attending Iowa State University], … he had given himself the middle name of Washington.” Some sources, such as George Washington Carver: From Slave to Scientist by Janet Benge, add that he used the middle initial “W” in his correspondence because mail addressed to “George Carver” was being delivered to another George Carver.

As late as the first or second grade when a teacher gently disabused me of the notion, I was convinced that the shared names denoted some special connection between George Washington Carver and George Washington.

There are a number of photos of Henry Ford and George Washington Carver on the internet, but, as far as I can determine, this site has the only such photo emblazoned with the caption, George Washington Carver, left, and industrialist Henry Ford share a weed sandwich in this 1942 photograph.

The two leaders of foreign nations best known for soliciting Carver’s advice on enhancing their respective county’s agricultural resources were Joseph Stalin and Mahatma Gandhi (Gandhi also asked for personal nutritional recommendations).

This is probably no more than a “how about that?” sort of coincidence, but doesn’t it seem somehow significant?

There is a strong consensus that Carver was a talented artist and musician. It is interesting to speculate about how his life and history might have changed had he pursued a career, as he originally intended, in either of these fields instead of being persuaded by his college art teacher to change his studies and his focus to agricultural science.²

If nothing else, the Tuskegee Institute would have been a very different sort of place without Carver, and it is difficult to imagine who, had Carver not been on the scene, would have carried on Booker T. Washington’s legacy after his death. On the other hand, it is appealing to wonder if Carver might personally have been happier confronting artistic challenges rather than dealing with the problems caused by abject poverty, depleted soil, and illiteracy.

George Washington Carver (left) and Allan Truax (right)

Ongoing readers will recognize the photo of Allan Truax, an individual who has been featured in several Heck of a Guy posts.³ Given that Allan Truax was a contemporary of Carver’s and that Truax was well read in general, it would be surprising if he were not aware of Carver’s work. Since Truax was specifically interested in horticulture and mycology (which were also areas of focus for Carver), it is not far fetched to believe he may well have had some insight into the extent to which Carver’s accolades were exaggerated.

In any case, I find myself longing to ask Mr. Truax about his opinion of Mr. Carver.

Footnotes

1. As I remember it, during this period, all the Carver Monument Superintendents were male.↩
2. This may be an especially poignant point in my mind because a primary theme of the Anjani Thomas interviews I’ve been posting is her unwaivering focus on music as the only acceptable career path.↩
3. An explanation of who Allan Truax is and why he is a feature of the Heck Of A Guy Blog can be found at Who’s Allan Truax?↩

Show Social Bookmarks

Hide Sites