Interpreting Dr. Carver

by Paxton Williams

Growing up, I learned what I suppose many of us learn about Dr. Carver when we are young: that he was a smart man who did a lot of work with peanuts. Many years later, while attending Iowa State University, Dr. Carver's alma mater, I participated in an honors seminar on Dr. Carver. This seminar included a trip to the Carver National Monument at Carver's birthplace in Diamond, Missouri and was taught by an eminent plant pathologist, Dr. Sande McNabb, for whom Dr. Carver was the major inspiration for his professional life.

In this seminar, I learned that George Washington Carver was a true renaissance man— a painter (one painting received an honorable mention at the 1894 World's Fair in Chicago), a musician (he once played concerts to raise money for Tuskegee), a marketing wiz (his strategies for increasing the use of the peanut should be required reading for any business program), a researcher, an inventor, and a most creative teacher— who overcame many obstacles that even today, seem unfathomable. That he was able to keep going on from his inauspicious beginnings, and thrive, is a testament not only to Dr. Carver, but also to the many kind and thoughtful individuals he met along this phase of his journey. Individuals such as a washer-woman named Mariah Watkins, her husband, an odd-jobs man named Andrew, an art teacher named Etta Budd, and a professor named Louis Pammell had no idea the genius with whom they were interacting. They had no idea what he would become, but they knew he had worth, and could do great good if only given a chance. They only saw a courteous young man who had a thirst for knowledge, and a will to meet any challenge with a warm smile.

It was then that I recognized that Dr. Carver's "story" was just as much about these people as it was about him. I decided to write a first-person presentation because I believe Dr. Carver and those individuals whom he met along his journey can serve as role models for all of us. We can all have the determination to succeed that Dr. Carver had, and we can all be the kind of people who helped Dr. Carver along the way. I also wanted to share how Dr. Carver affected many individuals who shaped our world, including Henry Ford, who placed Carver, along with Thomas Edison, as one of the two great scientists of the day, the humorist Will Rogers, who visited Carver in his Tuskegee laboratory, Franklin Roosevelt, who reportedly benefited from Dr. Carver's treatment for polio, famed US Secretary of Agriculture and Vice-President Henry Wallace, and Mahatma Gandhi among others. I also wanted to share Dr. Carver's "hands-on, minds-on" philosophy of education, his holistic view of well-being, and his view on the importance of nature.

I thought that if Dr. Carver, who was born in slavery, orphaned, and denied an education because of race, could persevere and affect the world in such a powerful way, then anything was possible. Further, that Carver would leave his comfortable environs in Ames, Iowa to go South to the Tuskegee Institute when Booker T. Washington called was testament to his regard for his fellow man. That Dr. Carver endured injustice, overcame barriers, and sought to "fill the poor man’s empty dinner pail" without any hint of self-pity or self-congratulation also greatly attracted me to his story. Dr. Carver lived a life that made his epitaph most true: He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found honor and happiness in being helpful to the world.

I also wanted to share the fun side of Dr. Carver's personality. The Dr. Carver who shocked his students by eating a tomato (then thought to be poisonous) in front of them and who showed the virtue of the sweet potato by secretly having a meal prepared solely using the sweet potato and only sharing with his guests the ingredients of the meal after they professed how delicious everything was. I most enjoy trying to recreate Dr. Carver's great wit and story-telling ability.

I want my first-person presentation of Dr. Carver to be both educational and prescriptive. It is my hope that this effort fulfills the true purpose of art, as defined by Activist/Entertainer/Humanitarian Harry Belafonte today, and by Paul Robeson before him.

Paxton Williams is a graduate of Iowa State University.  He holds a master's degree in Public Policy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.  Last year he was a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar at the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom).

http://thegwcstory.tripod.com/aboutpax.html

(The photo above is Carver's graduation portrait at Iowa State College in 1894.  Used by permission of Special Collections, Iowa State University.)

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