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George Washington Carver expert keeps legacy alive
Carver, Iowa State University’s first Black student, inspires another ISU scholar
Feb. 4, 2024 5:00 am
Born a slave on a Missouri plantation more than 160 years ago to a mother owned by Moses Carver, George Washington Carver was orphaned during the Civil War and freed with the abolition of slavery in 1865.
He stayed with the Carvers until age 10 or 12 and then left to get himself an education — a pursuit that would compel him the rest of his life, according to Britannica and other historical sources cataloging the life of the revolutionary American agricultural chemist and agronomist.
Through self-teaching and a fragmented education of experience, Carver obtained a high school education by his late 20s and was accepted to Highland College in Kansas — only to be refused upon arrival due to his skin color. Moving on, Carver landed in Iowa, where he befriended a white couple who urged him to enroll in Simpson College.
Once accepted, Carver studied piano and art until one of his teachers — Etta Budd — recognized his gift for painting flowers and plants and urged him to study botany at what then was called the Iowa State Agricultural College, or Iowa State University today.
In 1891, Carver became Iowa State’s first Black student and — later — its first Black faculty member, going on to gain international repute as director of agriculture for the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In addition to teaching, Carver discovered and developed alternate uses for sweet potatoes, soybeans and peanuts — like plastics, synthetic rubber and paper.
Among his other synthetic discoveries were bleach, chili sauce, instant coffee, shoe polish, shaving cream, linoleum, meat tenderizer and Worcestershire sauce. He developed more than 300 products from peanuts, 118 from sweet potatoes — and a legacy that’s inspired and supported the education of thousands.
Among those is Paxton Williams, 46, of Des Moines, who found his way to ISU in 1996 as a “George Washington Carver scholar.” For his honors project in 1999, he created a one-man show about Carver, which he’s since performed as Carver more than 400 times in 24 states and in England.
This week, 25 years after first writing the show, Williams performed a 30-minute excerpt Thursday during ISU’s second annual Carver Day — created in 2022 when the Iowa Legislature established Feb. 1 as an Official Day of Recognition in honor of Carver.
Q: Has the show evolved over time, or has it mostly stayed the same?
A: “Oh it’s evolved, and it’s continued to evolve. I tell different stories.”
Q: Has your Carver expertise grown over the years?
A: “Yes. … I’ve gotten to know a number of folks who knew Carver. … I knew his final nurse well; I knew a lady named Amelia Boynton Robinson … who was a secretary to Dr. (Martin Luther) King during the time of the Montgomery bus boycott, and her husband was one of Professor Carver’s students, and her son was actually named after Carver, and Carver was her son’s godfather. So I got to know her well and several other folks who knew him and worked with him. And they would have stories that they would share … some I haven’t even seen written in any other books.
“So my knowledge and appreciation of Carver grows.”
Q: Is there a story someone has told you that stands out as exemplifying his character or legacy?
A: “Amelia Boynton Robinson had this great quote. She said, ‘Carver used what the people had, and the people had nothing.’ They didn’t have a lot of high-technological advancements. … He was really good at rehabilitating things and reusing things, finding different uses for things.”
Q: When did you first learn about Carver? Was he someone you knew about as a child?
A: “I don't remember exactly … I just know I had some knowledge of Carver from my childhood. I would imagine it could have been a Black History Month program or just growing up in the South. I just always remember having some awareness of Professor Carver.”
Q: Where did you grow up and how did you end up at Iowa State?
A: “Originally I’m from Bay St. Louis, Miss. … And when I was a kid, my parents moved to Indiana. So I grew up in Northwest Indiana, first in Gary and then in Merrillville, and I lived in Indiana until I came to Iowa State for college.”
Because Williams was a National Achievement Scholar, Iowa State recruited him in 1996.
“I came in under a George Washington Carver scholarship as well.”
Q: How did you end up writing a one-man show about Carver?
A: “I was in an honors seminar at Iowa State, taught by a now-deceased plant pathologist named Sande McNabb, and Sande loved Carver's story. And he taught a seminar and in that seminar, we went down to Diamond, Mo., to Carver’s birth place … So I learned a lot about him when I was a student. … And I had to do an honors project, and Sande suggested I write a play for my honors project on Carver, and that's how that idea came about.”
Q: How has Carver inspired your career path?
A: “Carver had a great attention to detail. And I found that in my work as an attorney, detail is really important.”
After Williams earned his bachelor’s degree in political science and communication studies from ISU in 2000, he went on to earn graduate degrees from the University of Birmingham in England, the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago Law School. He served as executive director of the George Washington Carver Birthplace Association in Diamond, Mo., from 2005 to 2009 and served as associate producer for an Iowa PBS documentary on Carver, as well as the content expert on a National Geographic Reader Series book on Carver.
Today, he’s a lawyer with Belin McCormick in Des Moines and last year was honored with ISU’s Carrie Chapman Catt Public Engagement Award.
Carver also prioritized giving back to his community and exploring his interested and talents — including in the arts.
“In addition to being a scientist, he was a painter, he used to write, he used to knit and crochet. And I think I've kind of been inspired to — even though my main focus is as an attorney — I still try to occasionally, when I get asked to do a performance such as this, to do it.”
Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.
Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com
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