GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER’S EDUCATION – One day in 1878, Mariah Watkins found a fourteen year-old African-American boy sleeping in her wood pile. She took him in and enrolled him in the local one room school house. He did chores and studied until he felt he had learned all he could and he moved on, taking odd jobs and getting more schooling. At age 25, he was accepted into Highland University, but was turned away at the door when they realized he was black. Five years later, he attended all-white Simpson College in Iowa. He paid for his tuition with his only $12. He earned money by washing cloths in two tubs he bought on credit. After he graduated, he went on to teach at Iowa State and then famously at Tuskegee Institute. Whitcomb p. 149
CARVER’S RANSOM – When he was just a baby, George and his mother was kidnapped by raiders during the Civil War. His master, Moses Carver, offered a race horse as a ransom and hired a Union scout named John Bentley to track down the kidnapper or kidnappers. Six days later, Bentley returned with the barely alive baby, but not his mother. Bentley was given the race horse. Carver’s wife nursed the baby back to health, but George grew up frail with a persistent cough that caused his adult voice to be high and squeaky. Whitcomb p. 236
0 Comments