George Washington Carver, a botanist from Missouri, is inducted for his work with peanuts and sweet potatoes which helped build American food industries. He was particularly dedicated to fostering the agricultural sufficiency of the South.

Carver was born of slave parents in Southwest Missouri. He taught himself to read and write and worked his way through schools in free-state Kansas. He began post-secondary education at Simpson College in 1890 and graduated from Iowa State Agricultural College in 1894. Carver earned a Master’s Degree in Botany in 1896 and was appointed director of the newly formed Agricultural Department at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, a position he held for over forty years.

When boll weevil infestation threatened southern cotton growers in the 1900s, Carver implemented a plan for farmers to transfer to other crops and use otherwise idle land to grow nutritious food for the poor and under-nourished populations.

He received numerous honors for his work in soil science and conservation, chemistry and botany. From his laboratory in Tuskegee, Carver’s experiments with diet and food preparation led to modifications of commonplace crops to produce hundreds of new foods and industrial products. George Washington Carver demonstrated dedication to his credo: “Whatever helps the Southern farmer helps the entire South; and what helps the South helps everybody.”