George Washington Carver

Hi and welcome Queer STEM History, the podcast where we explore the lives and science of some famous or not as famous queer scientists throughout the ages. I’m one of your hosts Len, and I use they/them pronouns, and my name is Lauren and I use she/her pronouns.

 

In the last few episodes we’ve been looking at a couple of scientists from the 20th century and a big part in why we’re doing that is it is quite difficult to find scientists from other historical periods where we can be absolutely sure of their queerness, and there’s a few reasons that this might be. It might be because they may not have had the vocabulary or the labels to describe their lives in the ways that we do now. But also because society may not have been in a place where they were able to live openly or that other people would have been known. And then just of course the fact that there is a lot of erasure in history of queer people and their lives, so even though they might have been queer, it may not be reported in this historical documents we have now.

 

You know, we’ve got so many people we’ve got rumours about but they’re never confirmed but theres a hot debate – you’ve got Leonardo DaVinci, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon and so many more. Like, I’m gonna believe that they’re all queer, but like it is really difficult to know.

 

So today, the figure that we’re going to be talking about, they are definitely seen within the queer science community to be an icon. They are rumoured to have been bisexual but they never used this label themselves. So we just wanted to put that out there at the beginning of the episode that we don’t know, not in their own words did they ever say what their sexuality was or was it defined. But we really wanted to share this story because it Is just such a fascinating story and we really hope you enjoy it as much as we have enjoyed learning about it.

 

So today we’re looking at the Black American scientist George Washington Carver who was considered by Einstien as one of his top 10 greatest scientists, helped craft a vegetarian diet for Gandhi and has dozens of schools in America named after him. Carver is most well known for his agricultural research which helped to develop techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton, mainly by promoting peanuts which led to him being famously known as the Peanut man.

 

So we think its really important to start at the beginning of George’s story.

 

George was born into slavery in Missouri in the early 1860’s just before the end of the Civil War. His master Moses Carver was a German American immigrant who had purchased George’s parents for $700. Didn’t have a great start to life, George’s father died in an accident before he was born. And then when George was about a week old he, his sister and his mother were actually kidnapped and sold in Kentucky. Moses Carver hired his neighbour to retrieve the family, but the neighbour only succeeded in finding George, whom he purchased by trading one of Moses' finest horses.

 

 After slavery was abolished in Missouri in 1865 after the Civil War, Moses Carver and his wife Susan raised George and his older brother James as their own children - they didn’t have any of their own.

 

At the time black children were not allowed at the public school in Diamond Grove where they lived. So At the age of eleven, Carver left the farm and traveled ten miles away to attend a school for blacks. When he arrived the school was closed, he slept in a barn and the next day met a kind black woman Mariah Watkins who he rented a room from. He identified himself as Carver’s George, and Mariah was the one that told him his name was George Carver.

 

George often said Mariah had a great influence on him - particularly his words “you must learn all you can, then go back out into the world and give your learning back to the people.”

 

At 13 he moved to Fort Scott, Kansas for a better school, but after witnessing a lynching of a black man there he moved again. He attended several schools before gaining a diploma at Minneapolis High School. He applied to several colleges to continue his education and was accepted at Highland University in Kansas. However, when he arrived, an official said his acceptance had been a mistake as the school had never admitted a black and had no intention to do so.

 

Sometime in the late 1880s Carver met the Milhollands, a white couple who he later credited with encouraging him to continue to pursue higher education. The Milhollands urged Carver to enrol in nearby Simpson College. Carver was hesitant; as he did not want to be rejected and be humiliated again.

 

Carver eventually entered Simpson College, a small school in Iowa, that admitted all qualified applicants, regardless of race or ethnicity. One black had attended the school before Carver, and there were three Asians still on campus. When one of his teachers Etta Bud learnt of his interest in botany she encouraged Carver to study at Iowa State agricultural college.

 

So in 1891 George Carver enrolled at Iowa State Agricultural college as their first black student. He was not allowed to sleep in residential dormitories or eat in the dining hall. Carver slept in an old office and was forced to eat meals in the kitchen basement with the employees. Iowa State University professors Joseph Budd and Louis Pammel convinced Carver to continue there for his master's degree. His masters research gained him national recognition and respect as a botanist.

 

There are so many times when it seemed like his education wouldn’t be possible at the time, and we would have missed out on incredible scientific mind. Carver acknowledged role others had in continuing to encourage him to continue. How much else has science lost because people have been pushed out - whether that’s because of their race, sexuality, socioeconomic status.

 

And we know this is still happening - A 2018 study actually found that students from sexual minorities are leaving STEM degrees at higher rates than their heterosexual classmates.

 

And with surveys revealing that at one university that 70% of STEM faculty of reported feeling uncomfortable and discriminated against in their department it still sucks.

 

Carver obtained his Master of Agriculture degree in 1896 and immediately received a number of offers, eventually accepting role as director of the newly established Agricultural school at the Tuskegee Institute, a historically all-black college. At the time, Carver was the only known black person in the country who had graduate training in agricultural science.

 

Carver accepted, writing that "it has always been the one great ideal of my life to be of the greatest good to the greatest number of 'my people' possible and to this end I have been preparing myself these many years; feeling as I do that this line of education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom to our people."

 

While working at the Tuskegee Institute, Carver developed techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. Together with other agricultural experts, he urged farmers to restore nitrogen to their soils by alternating cotton crops with plantings of sweet potatoes or legumes (such as peanuts, soybeans and cowpeas). These crops both restored nitrogen to the soil and were good for human consumption. This became even more urgent with the devastation in the early 20th century of the cotton crop due to the boll weevil. But to convince Southern Farmers to grow crops other than cotton, there had to be a market for the alternative crops of peanuts, peas, sweet potatoes, soybeans, and the like.

 

So Carver started an industrial research laboratory to develop new applications for the new crops, particularly the peanut. He is widely acknowledged for developing over 300 uses for the peanut - but sadly not peanut butter. He also widely distributed recipes using the alternative crops including peanuts and sweet potatoes to encourage improved nutrition in the South.

 

To train farmers to successfully rotate and cultivate the new crops, Carver also helped setup a travelling agricultural school on a wagon. The wagon was so successful that within a few months it was made part of the outreach program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

 

Carver received many honours throughout his life, including being made a member of the Royal Society of Arts in England, one of only a handful of Americans at that time to receive this honour. He was featured on stamps, money, had ships named after him, and he was also elected into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

 

Little information has survived about Carver’s romantic life, but he has come to be somewhat of an icon for the queer community. Such a fact is testified to by his inclusion in the Encyclopaedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture and books such as Out in All Directions: The Almanac of Gay and Lesbian America.

 

What we do know for sure is that Carver never married, and was said to “rebuff all matchmaking efforts of his friends.” In her 2015 biography, Christina Vella reviews his relationships and suggests that Carver was bisexual and constrained by mores of his historic period. It has also been reported that Tuskegee Administrators were concerned about potential scandal from the persistent rumours of Carver's sexuality.

 

Carver formed deep and often long-lasting friendships with several male students, who came to be known as "Carver's boys." He wrote them affectionate letters that were flowery rather than explicit, and so it is not known to what extent--if at all--he acted upon any romantic feelings that they may have shared. He also participated in what has been termed “not very dignified” horseplay with handsome men.

 

At age 40, he began a courtship with Sarah L. Hunt, an elementary school teacher and the sister-in-law of the treasurer of Tuskegee Institute. This lasted three years until she took a teaching job in California. When he was 70, Carver established a life and research partnership with the scientist Austin W. Curtis, Jr. a graduate of Cornell University. They lived together until his death in 1943. The two men kept details of their lives together discreet so historians know little about how these men understood their relationship.

 

What we do know is that it was apparently a familiar sight at Tuskegee to see Carver and Curtis walking arm-in-arm to check on their experiments. The fact that Carver willed all his assets to this man also testifies to the significance of the relationship. After the death of Carver, Curtis was quickly fired from the Tuskegee Institute. In 1943, Carver biographer Rackham Holt described the relationship between the two men: “At last someone had been welcomed not merely into Dr. Carver’s laboratory, but also into his heart.” Very sweet.

 

And now for a queer science bucketlist moment from this story!

 

In 1943 President Roosevelt dedicated $30,000 for the George Washington Carver National Monument in the area where Carver had spent time in his childhood. This was the first national monument dedicated to an African American and the first to honour someone other than a president. The 210-acre national monument complex includes a nature trail, museum, the house he grew up in and a replica of his lab. I would love to visit!

 

I hope you enjoyed listening to this week’s episode and join us again next week for another fascinating queer scientist story. This podcast would not be able to be produced without the support of the Australian National University Centre for the Public Awareness of Science and their podcast studio. You can find us on Facebook at Queer STEM History, on Twitter at QSTEM History or on our website. Links to all of these are in our podcast description and you can find our show notes on our website as well as further resources on the topic, we will provide all of the links for you.

 

Thanks for listening. Bye.