Happy birthday, George Washington Carver

We celebrate the birth of botanist and inventor George Washington Carver today, though his exact birthday is not known, nor is the year but scholars believe it was 1864 or 1965. Carver is known for researching and promoting the use of alternative crops to cotton such as sweet potatoes, soybeans, and most notably, peanuts. He is credited with finding 300 uses for peanuts, including cosmetics, shoe polish, talcum powder, and mayonnaise. Time magazine called him the “Black Leonardo” in 1941. He taught agriculture at Tuskegee Institute for 47 years. Carver wrote a memoir, My Larger Education : Being Chapters from My Experience (1911). In the 1920s he wrote a newspaper column, Professor Carver’s Advice.

Happy birthday, Booker T. Washington

It is the birthday of African-American educator Booker T. Washington (1856), who grew the Tuskegee Institute to be one of the most significant institutions of higher education for black students in the nation. Washington established relationships in both black and white communities throughout the country aimed toward improving and developing black education. He secured donations to help start thousands of small rural schools throughout the South. He grew in stature and became an adviser to presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Washington wrote 14 books, some with the help of ghost writers Robert E. Park and Max Bennett. Among them are The Story of My Life and Work (1900), Up From Slavery (1901), The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery (two volumes) (1909), My Larger Education (1911), and The Man Farthest Down (1912).  He was honored with a U.S. postage stamp in the 1940s, on a Liberty Ship in 1942, and on a half dollar coin in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Happy birthday, Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington

It is the birthday of educator and author Booker T. Washington (1856), who wrote 14 books, including an autobiography, Up From Slavery (1901). He was a leading member of the last generation of African Americans born into slavery. At 25, he became the first leader of the Tuskegee Institute, a black teachers' college in Alabama. He advocated education as a means for African Americans to rise from poverty to success, and it became his life's work. He rose to national prominence after a speech on race relations given at the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta in which he advocated that Southern blacks work hard and submit to white political rule in exchange for guaranteed education and equal rights under the law. It is regarded as one of the most important and influential speeches in American history. Later civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois criticized Washington, calling the speech the Atlanta Compromise. In addition to his autobiography, Washington also wrote The Story of My Life and Work (1900), The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery [two volumes] (1909), My Larger Education (1911) and The Man Farthest Down (1912).