The Legacy of George Washington Carver with Curtis Gregory

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Welcome to AMSEcast, coming to you from Oak Ridge, Tennessee,

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a global leader in science, technology, and innovation.

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My name is Alan Lowe, director of the American Museum

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of Science and Energy, and the K-25 History Center.

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Each episode of AMSEcast presents world-renowned authors,

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scientists, historians, policymakers, and everyone in between,

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sharing their insights on a variety of fascinating topics.

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Welcome to AMSEcast.

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Thanks so much for joining us.

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With a generous grant from the Institute for Museum and

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Library Services, or IMLS, we’re producing a series of AMSEcast

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episodes devoted to 250 years of American innovation, all to

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celebrate our nation’s upcoming semiquincentennial in 2026.

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To help us do that today, we’re joined by Curtis Gregory, park ranger at the

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George Washington Carver National Monument, located in Diamond, Missouri.

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Curtis has been with the Carver National Monument for nearly 20

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years, so we knew he was the person we needed to talk with about the

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remarkable legacy of innovation left to us by George Washington Carver.

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Curtis, thanks so much for joining us on AMSEcast.

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Hey.

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Well, thank you.

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And on behalf of the National Park Service, thank you for having me, as well as

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the National Park—or George Washington Carver National Park—be a part of this.

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This is wonderful.

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Thank you.

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Well—no, no, we appreciate you and our colleagues

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at the National Park Service Very, very much.

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I also greatly enjoyed learning more about George

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Washington Carver as I prepared to talk to you.

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You know, I’ve known the story in general.

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I must admit, but when I dug a little deeper, so impressive his accomplishments.

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And I know that you talk about that every day.

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I’m sure it never gets old, though, but to me as a

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brand new topic, it was truly astounding in many ways.

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And one of those things is, you know, he went from being

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born enslaved in Missouri in 1864 to being a college

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graduate and professor by the time he was 30 years of age.

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I know it’s a big question, Curtis, but how did he

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manage to make that transition, that amazing transition?

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He had this drive that he would never, never give up.

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And he didn’t give up.

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There were several times throughout this journey where he could have given up.

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And where I’m at here at the George Washington Carver National Monument

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is where Carver was born, and where he was born, enslaved, to a mother who

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was brought to this property in 1855 as an enslaved girl, about 13 or so.

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And she was brought here, she was owned by Moses and Susan Carver.

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And Moses and Susan Carver were a white couple who

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came to Missouri from Illinois about the 1830s.

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The property where we are at now, they started a big working farm.

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In 1855 they purchased one enslaved girl by the name of Mary.

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As a result of that, Mary had at least two children.

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George had another brother, Jim, and then

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George was born, we think about 1864 or so.

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George’s father, we believe, was another enslaved

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individual who died in an accident before he was born.

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And so, George’s mother and brother all lived here for a short while together.

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And at the close of the Civil War, in southwest Missouri was pretty

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dangerous, and George and his mother were abducted—slave raiders,

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bushwackers, we’re not really sure who—and George and Moses Carver

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wanted to get them back, so he hired someone to go out to find them.

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And George was found, supposedly, we think, down in Arkansas,

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which is about 40 miles from where the park is located.

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But his mother was never found.

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And so, we’re not sure what happened to Mary.

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Did she die?

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Was she sold off into slavery, into deeper south or such?

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But George was brought back to the Carver farm.

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That’s where he began to learn about the natural world when he had free time.

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And around the age of 13 or so, he decided

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that he wanted to leave to get an education.

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And that started his journey around the age of around the age of 13 or so,

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to leave Missouri—well, he stayed in Missouri for a short while—throughout

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Kansas, journeying for an education, and making his way to what is now

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Iowa State University, where he graduated with two degrees in agriculture.

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And he just had that determination that he would never, never give.

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And many, many obstacles in that journey to becoming

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the first black graduate from Iowa State University,

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with both Bachelor and Master’s degree in Agriculture.

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And then went south to Tuskegee, Alabama, where he

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spent the rest of his life, which was about 47 years.

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But it all started on this small property in Diamond, Missouri,

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where this kid at that time just never, never, never gave up.

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Just a remarkable, remarkable story.

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You mentioned Tuskegee—of course, that’s where he gained international

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fame—then called—as I learned in my research, Carter, so you tell

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me, if I’m right—the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute.

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Now, we know it as Tuskegee University.

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So, what can you tell us about that institute and the role also of another

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African American leader, Booker T. Washington, in hiring Carver at Tuskegee?

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Great question.

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So, in 1896, while Carver was working on—while he was working on his

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master’s degree from what is now Iowa State University—at that time, it

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was Iowa Agricultural School—and he’s working on his master’s degree.

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Booker T. Washington found out about this young guy at Iowa and

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recruited him to come to Tuskegee to start the Agriculture Department.

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So, Carver finished his master’s degree, and by

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October of 1896, he was on his way to Tuskegee.

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Booker T. Washington helped start Tuskegee Institute

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in 1881 with another guy by the name of Louis Adams.

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Lewis Adams was really the founder of Tuskegee.

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Booker T. Washington was the first what was known as

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principal, what we know today as president of Tuskegee.

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And he invited Carver to come and start the Agriculture Department in 1896.

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Booker T. Washington would often recruit

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the very best teachers that he could find.

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And again, he found out about Carver at Iowa.

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Carver had been in negotiations with another school in Mississippi to go to

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teach agriculture, but when Washington reached out to him, he went to Tuskegee.

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He seemed to be inspired by Booker T. Washington’s

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idea, what was known as the Tuskegee idea.

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And Tuskegee started out as a vocational and industrial

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school to help students to become more self-sufficient, and

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Carver believed in that mission, and he stayed at Tuskegee.

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When he arrives in Tuskegee, can you just kind of give us the lay of the land?

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What was the state of agriculture in the south?

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And we know he’ll have a big impact on that, but what

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was the state of agriculture when he arrived at Tuskegee?

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When he arrived at Tuskegee, he saw the area to be so poor.

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That was his first time being in the South, in the rural south.

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Carver had grown up in the Midwest, had been in Iowa for several

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years, and when he took that train ride to Alabama for the first

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time, being in Macon County, Alabama, he saw a different world.

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He saw a different world, especially for rural black farmers.

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He said that land was poor, the people were poor, and

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he just saw a different outlook on life in rural South.

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And so, by that point, when Carver got there,

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most of the farmers or the sharecroppers were still growing cotton.

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But as you know, the boll weevil cleaned out

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that section, or the south, devastated that area.

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And so Carver, when he got there, he was trying to think

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of other innovative ways so that farmers and farming

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families could be, you know, become more self-sufficient.

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And so, when he got there, he, you know, introduced—well, introduced to

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this section of Alabama, peanuts, and sweet potatoes, and different types

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of cash crops, where farmers and farming families could make a living.

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Why did he turn to the peanut?

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He’s known especially for his work on the peanut innovations there.

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What led him to the peanut in the first place?

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Well, I think what led him to the peanut, Carver

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started working with the peanut in about 1903.

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And one of the things was, as we just talked about, the devastation of

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what the boll weevil did, several people, several farmers, and different

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groups were turning to peanuts as well as Carver because of the legume

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the peanut is a legume, and it put nitrogen back into the soil to

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make the soil nice and rich, and so then you could grow other things.

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And so, in this section of Alabama, there was an abundance of peanuts.

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And so, Carver went into his laboratory and

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started to produce other uses of the peanut.

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Yeah, what are some of those uses?

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I know I was amazed again at the list of things that he came up with.

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Yeah there’s about 300 or 325 different uses,

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from different types of oils to paint stains.

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He had a patent on a ladies facial cream.

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And there’s inks, and dyes, and shoe polishes, and all sorts of

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different things, as well as, like, foods and things like that.

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Something that is important to—I like to get across, especially when we get

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a lot of students here, is that Carver didn’t really invent anything; he came

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up with different uses of the peanut, sweet potato, and soybean, and such.

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Did he come up with the use of peanut butter?

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That’s something in popular culture, but I understand he did not.

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Am I correct?

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You’re correct.

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And you know what?

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We get that question all the time.

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We get a lot of visitors, like, I like George Washington

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Carver so much because he came up with peanut butter.

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And you know, we have to tell him, no, he

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didn’t really come up with peanut butter.

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I’m sure Carver made his own peanut butter, but as I mentioned before,

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Carver started working with peanuts about 1903 and peanut butter,

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really, the peanut butter that we know of the day came about 1895

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or so, and from someone from the Kellogg family.

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In your gift shop there, do you sell peanut butter?

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No, we don’t sell any peanut butter, but we sell peanuts.

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We sell peanuts, and kids can go out and

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grow their own grown peanut plant [laugh]

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Oh, that’d be cool.

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I want to do that.

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Yeah.

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That’s great [laugh]

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Yeah.

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And you can make your own peanut butter [laugh]

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Fantastic.

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I love it.

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So, you mentioned earlier the sweet potato, too.

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I didn’t realize until getting ready for today

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that he also innovated with the sweet potato.

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What were some of the uses he found for that?

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So, the sweet potato is very interesting because Carver was known

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for the peanut, but the sweet potato was actually the first plant

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that he started working with right after he got to Tuskegee about

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1897 because the peanut, it was easy to cultivate, and you could

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store it in the winter months, and it has a lot of nutritional value.

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And that was really the first plant that he worked with, was the sweet potato.

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And with the sweet potato, he came with a lot of different things.

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One of the interesting things that be came up

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with—well, products—was a sweet potato flour.

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And this was really a result of the First World War.

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During the First World War, there was a lot of shortages

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of different goods, and one of the things was wheat.

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And Carver came up with a sweet potato flour that the

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federal government was very, very interested in working

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with the USDA in developing this sweet potato flour.

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And Carver was on his way of working with the USDA, but in 1918

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as we know, the war ended, so there wasn’t really a use for it,

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but Carver would have probably been known, if that would have

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happened, as this sweet potato man, instead of the peanut man [laugh]

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The peanut man.

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Right.

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That’s really interesting stuff.

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There’s such an innovative mind.

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When he came up with these innovations, when he came up with these uses of

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the sweet potato and the peanut and other things, how did he get the word out?

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How did he communicate that beyond Tuskegee?

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When he first started, he would go to a lot of rural, like, black fairs,

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African American, like, fairs, he would go to churches, and he was be invited

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to speak, especially in the rural communities, on different—to farmers and such.

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And then when he became well known, really, after 1921, after

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he appeared before Congress, and when he became known as the

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peanut man, as we kind of think of him today as, he was offered

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speaking engagements and things around the country and things.

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But he would go out into these rural communities, and he would often

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go, like I said, to fairs, and church groups, and talk about better

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ways of farmers improving their farms, and to sharecroppers, and such.

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Interesting.

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I’ve read about something called a Jesup Wagon.

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What was that?

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Yeah, so the Jesup Wagon was one of the ways where he would get the word out.

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The Jesup Wagon was a movable school.

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It was a movable school on wheels.

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This was kind of an innovation of Booker T. Washington.

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What Booker T. Washington wanted to do was have his teachers go

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out into the rural communities, into the really, really rural

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communities, and help and teach the people in these rural areas.

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Well, they came up with this movable school idea, where they would take

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a school on wheels, and they would go out into the rural communities.

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And Booker T. Washington secured funds from a

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wealthy New York banker by the name of Morris Jesup.

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So, that’s where the name Jesup Wagon comes from.

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Carver designed the wagon, and he innovated the wagon, and put different,

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like, tools, they would put teaching techniques, teaching methods on the

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wagon, and they would take a wagon out at a church or at a fair, and they

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would set it up, and they would just teach farmers and farming families about

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different ways of improving themselves, as well as their soil and things.

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And so, this was about 1906.

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And then shortly later, they got money for a truck that

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could even go out even further into these communities.

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And you know, the movable school was adapted by the USDA a little later.

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And so, it was a wonderful way of reaching people in far communities,

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especially these rural farmers, and for blacks and such in these areas.

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So, not just an innovator in uses of things like the

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peanut, but also an innovator on how to get that word out.

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Really fascinating.

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Yes, how to get the word out by pamphlets, by some

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of those agricultural bulletins, and such as well.

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So, you mentioned earlier, he became very well known,

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testified before Congress, was known around the world.

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Can you tell us, perhaps, some of the famous people he met,

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and how did he leverage that fame to help support his work?

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Well, when he got to Tuskegee and he started working in agriculture in

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1896, you know, he was known in the south, where he would go on speaking

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engagements, and when he was teaching, but really, the fame, really,

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to me, it really started after 1921 when he appeared before Congress.

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And some of the people that he met, one of the most

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famous that he worked with or met was Henry Ford.

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He and Henry Ford seemed to be great friends.

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There's a little bit of evidence that Thomas Edison may have known

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about him somewhat, but really one of the most famous was Henry Ford.

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And he and Henry Ford were great friends.

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Some big names there together, for sure.

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So, when you look back at his work, what would you say his

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impact was on agriculture in the south, and really nationwide?

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It was his work with, you know, developing these different

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products, from sweet potatoes, and soybeans, and peanuts.

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But more importantly, I think what it was really was to help teach farmers

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and teach people, especially those rural farmers, about better ways of

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improving their lives, especially with the soil, so they could become more

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self-sufficient and helping people with food insecurities and things like that.

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I think that was, really to me, that was the

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impact, and you can still see some of that today.

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What about innovators today?

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When you look at his way of doing things and the success he had, what

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lessons do you think innovators today can take from Carver’s example?

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A lot of people today look at some of the things that he tried to do with food

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insecurities and research developed different types of ways of helping people.

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You see that today at Iowa State University, you see that today

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at Tuskegee Institute, at the University of Missouri in the ag

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departments and things like that, where you can still see some of

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Carver’s some of his techniques today, but being much more advanced.

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Now, I want to learn about the George Washington Carver

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National Monument, where I intend to come, Curtis.

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I’m excited about it now.

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I want to come learn more.

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What can we visit and do when I do get there?

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And when our listeners get there, what can you visit and what can you do there?

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Where I’m at, at the George Washington, Carver National

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Monument, as I mentioned, we’re a part of the National

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Park Service, and we have been here since 1943.

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Shortly after Carver died, the Congress

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established the National Monument in his honor.

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We’re the first park in the National Park Service

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dedicated to an African American, in 1943.

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And so, we are on the original property where Carver was born, a 240 acre farm.

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We have a visitor center, a 13,000 square foot visitor center.

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We have three floors of exhibits, films on George Washington Carver.

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We have a little classroom that’s kind of like one of George’s laboratories at

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Tuskegee, where we do different types of experiments, and we offer guided tours.

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And it’s a wonderful property to learn about.

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George Washington Carver.

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We’re open seven days a week, nine to five, and it’s

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all on George Washington Carver, his life story, which

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started here in the little town of Diamond, Missouri.

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Wow.

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Where can our folks go to learn more and to plan their trip?

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We have our website on, if you just do a Google search of the National

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Park Service, you can find George Washington Carver National Monument.

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We’re on social media: Facebook, X, and you can learn about

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George Washington Carver on those platforms, or go to our website.

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You can actually—visitors, if they’re planning their visit,

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they can actually go out there and see our park film on George

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Washington Carver, The Legacy of George Washington Carver: Triumph

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and Struggle, and you can watch the film out there as well.

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Just an amazing story, an amazing man, an amazing innovator.

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Curtis, I can’t thank you enough.

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I really appreciate you joining us in AMSEcast.

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Thank you so much for having us, and we look forward to you

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coming to the park, as well, as your listeners, as well.

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We’ll do it.

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Thank you so much.

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Thank you for joining us on this episode of AMSEcast.

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For more information on this topic or any others, you can always visit us at

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AMSE.org or find, like, and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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00:19:30,109 --> 00:19:32,439
I invite you to visit the American Museum of Science

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and Energy and the K-25 History Center in person.

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00:19:35,560 --> 00:19:39,730
You can also shop at our online store and become a member at AMSE.org.

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00:19:40,179 --> 00:19:43,629
Thanks to our production team with Matt Mullins, plus our supportive colleagues

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at the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Office of Environmental

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Management, and Office of Legacy Management, as well as Oak Ridge National

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00:19:51,450 --> 00:19:57,310
Laboratory, the Y-12 National Security Complex, NNSA, and the AMSE Foundation.

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And of course, thanks to our wonderful guests

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today, and to all of you for listening.

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I hope you’ll join us for the next episode of AMSEcast.

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