George Washington Carver

George Washington Carver was born into slavery during the Civil War in the state of Missouri, a location that I am heading to next weekend.  The state famous for its compromise on slavery.  George’s parents were Mary and Giles, a couple without a last name of their own because slaves took the name of their owner.  A week after George was born, he, along with his mother and sister, were kidnapped by a band of raiders and sold as slaves in Arkansas.  Moses Carver, the owner of Mary and Giles, went after the trio and brought George back to Missouri where he and his wife, Susan, decided to raise him as their own.  Susan taught George how to read and write and encouraged himto always thirst for knowledge – a trait that would serve him, and us, well.  He later went to a school for blacks because the white educational institutions would not accept non-white students.  He was initially denied admittance to college because, you guessed it, he was black.   However, a teacher encouraged him to keep studying because his hard work would pay off.  It did.  He was accepted to Simpson College in 1890 at age 26 where a professor encouraged him to enroll in the Botany program at Iowa State.  He did just that and while there another professor encouraged him to stay for a master’s degree where his knowledge base could pay dividends. It did. For him and for us.  The next time you eat peanut butter, think of George Washington Carver.  He invented 30 uses for peanuts, leather dyes, cosmetics, hen food, breakfast food, buttermilk, sauces, dry coffee, linoleum, and hundreds more including nitroglycerine; the latter that I personally thankful for. Many people encouraged him to become the man he became.

Encouragement is the common thread in the life of George Washington Carver. Personal care would be 1-B.  The Carvers made the commitment to raise George as a son at a time where this was unheard of.  They encouraged him to always find something more than was his so-called lot in life.  He had a teacher at an all-black school encourage him to have a vision past those four walls of restraint.  He had college professors who encouraged him to keep pushing, keep reading, keep researching, and to keep dreaming because they all saw something in this black boy without a last name.  Look what happened.  We are all beneficiaries of his work in some way and it all started with a little encouragement.  Take a look around at your students tomorrow, take a good long look.  Imagine what they can become.  Perhaps you are now teaching a future teacher, engineer, doctor, minister, inventor of a cure for cancer.  Who knows?  What we need to do is to provide encouragement to our kids even though they may not see it that way.  Make it a point to encourage at least one kid today and keep doubling that until you have encouraged them all.  Make it a point to call home at least once a week to tell parent that their kid is doing a good job.  The dividends back to you cannot be measured. Maybe the next George Washington Carver is sitting right there in your classroom.

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The Browns play this Sunday against the Green Bay Packers…a lot of history here from two of the oldest franchises.  We plan to move the cheese!