While numerous calendars proclaim today,January 10th,as George Washington Carvers birthday-it is actually the date he died,in 1943.His actual exact date of birth has never been accurately determined because he was born a slave and records were not kept,and while January 5th is actually supposed to be "George Washington Carver Recognition Day" you do not see THAT on any calendars so nevertheless I will honor him on this day,which is incorrectly reported as his birthday.
He was orphaned at a young age after he and his family were kidnapped from their owner Moses Carver by slave traders.When the sickly George was returned,Moses Carver and his wife raised George and his brother as their own children,providing them with a home,and most importantly,an education at a time when it was considered taboo to educate blacks.Despite being born during slavery and living through segregation,he completed college after having excelled in agricultural studies and went on to not only teach others his groundbreaking farming methods but to pioneeer the practice of crop rotation in the South.Aside from his accomplishments in growing and promoting peanuts,and producing hybrid cotton plants,he was a poet and a painter and a mentor to children.He was buried on the grounds of Tuskegee University after his death alongside Tuskegee founder and his former sometime adversary,Booker T.Washington.
Carver deserves recognition because he and others like him paved the way and in a time when many black American adults were unable to read,he obtained a Masters Degree and gave back to the farming community he had been born into as a slave.He earned his spot as one of the most influental Americans of the past century and that before it.
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