GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER: A BIOGRAPHY, by Gary R. Kremer (Greenwood, an imprint of ABC-CLIO LLC, Santa Barbara, CA:2011)
A BOOK REVIEW
11/09/12
...
A BOOK REVIEW
11/09/12
...
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
I am a fan of Gary R. Kremer, the author of GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER: A BIOGRAPHY. I have read all of his books, including GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER: IN HIS OWN WORDS published in 1987. Both books I commend highly to anyone interested in Carver, a very unique man.
“Familiarity breeds contempt,” goes a well-known adage. Such is definitely the case with Carver, whose story we think we know by osmosis. Because we think we know him from school, black history month presentations, or otherwise, few bother to get to know him in earnest. That is unfortunate for the indolent. Carver was, is, and will forever be, a force of nature in all dimensions: spiritual and physical.
Though born in Diamond, Newton County, Missouri, in 1863, a slave, a beautiful 200-acre National Park Service Visitor's Center and Interactive Museum now graces the very grounds from which Arkansas bandits stole him and his mother, when he was but a sickly infant. Pursuing the thieves from his southwestern Missouri farm, somehow, his master, Moses Carver, was able to retrieve baby George. The fate of his mother, however, who was never recovered, nor heard from, remains unknown.
His rescue, itself, evokes that of the Biblical baby, Moses, from the Nile River by Pharaoh's daughter.
Throughout life, Carver felt like “a motherless child.” Though his desuetude was mitigated by the companionship of an older brother, James, who also lived on the farm, it was never satisfied. Carver retained his mother's spinning wheel, in remembrance of her, all of his life. Moses and Susan Carver, a childless, white couple, raised James and George after the Civil War ended, as a family members.
The book traces Carver's educational exodus from Diamond to neighboring Neosho, Missouri, where he attended a colored school in the home of the Watkins family, with whom he lodged, in exchange for services. It takes us through Kansas, then perceived as “the promised land” by persecuted former slaves. After witnessing a lynching of a black man in Ft. Scott, Kansas, he moved to Olathe, In Kansas, Carver eventually finished high school. Here also, he was denied admission to Highland College due to race, which omission, retrospectively shamed that institution into “admitting” and conferring an honorary degree upon him in 1996 . While in Kansas, he had also been a “sod-buster” in western Ness County, Kansas, homesteading in a 17 acre plot, living in a sod hut, while trying to eke out a living in bitterly harsh conditions, including drought.
Like many others, he abandoned that spartan existence, after a year. During the interim, he had been featured in the local newspaper, joined a literary society, sung in a church choir, painted floral scenes, read his Bible, sewed, darned, and spun cloth, when not tending to reluctant crops. He never had a wife. Gary Kremer has identified a female romantic interest at Tuskegee that he maintained for three years.
He was educated at Iowa State University, graduating in 1896, when he joined Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute in Macon County, Alabama, as the agricultural/horticultual department at that, then fledgling, institution founded by Washington in 1881. There joint gifts and determination occasionally led to disputations over the years, but “for the good of the race,” they toughed it out triumphantly.
Kremer's book accords recognition to Carver as the original “chemurgist,” now a multi-billion dollar industry in which widely diverse products are synthesized from organic substances. He is best known for his chemurgy, particularly as pertains to the sweet potato, peanut, and soy bean, from which he derived hundreds of practical applications, which he imparted, gratis, to the world.
Dr. Carver was a man of great faith, whose trust in God was complete. He recognized no distinction between the Bible and science, as extremists on both sides needlessly argue. He quotes from the Old Testament book of Job 12:7-10 (NIV): 7 “But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;8 or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you.9 Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?10 In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.” Carver also explains that “Science is the truth” in response to John 4:24: “God is a spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
Buy the book, read it and be blessed!
I am a fan of Gary R. Kremer, the author of GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER: A BIOGRAPHY. I have read all of his books, including GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER: IN HIS OWN WORDS published in 1987. Both books I commend highly to anyone interested in Carver, a very unique man.
“Familiarity breeds contempt,” goes a well-known adage. Such is definitely the case with Carver, whose story we think we know by osmosis. Because we think we know him from school, black history month presentations, or otherwise, few bother to get to know him in earnest. That is unfortunate for the indolent. Carver was, is, and will forever be, a force of nature in all dimensions: spiritual and physical.
Though born in Diamond, Newton County, Missouri, in 1863, a slave, a beautiful 200-acre National Park Service Visitor's Center and Interactive Museum now graces the very grounds from which Arkansas bandits stole him and his mother, when he was but a sickly infant. Pursuing the thieves from his southwestern Missouri farm, somehow, his master, Moses Carver, was able to retrieve baby George. The fate of his mother, however, who was never recovered, nor heard from, remains unknown.
His rescue, itself, evokes that of the Biblical baby, Moses, from the Nile River by Pharaoh's daughter.
Throughout life, Carver felt like “a motherless child.” Though his desuetude was mitigated by the companionship of an older brother, James, who also lived on the farm, it was never satisfied. Carver retained his mother's spinning wheel, in remembrance of her, all of his life. Moses and Susan Carver, a childless, white couple, raised James and George after the Civil War ended, as a family members.
The book traces Carver's educational exodus from Diamond to neighboring Neosho, Missouri, where he attended a colored school in the home of the Watkins family, with whom he lodged, in exchange for services. It takes us through Kansas, then perceived as “the promised land” by persecuted former slaves. After witnessing a lynching of a black man in Ft. Scott, Kansas, he moved to Olathe, In Kansas, Carver eventually finished high school. Here also, he was denied admission to Highland College due to race, which omission, retrospectively shamed that institution into “admitting” and conferring an honorary degree upon him in 1996 . While in Kansas, he had also been a “sod-buster” in western Ness County, Kansas, homesteading in a 17 acre plot, living in a sod hut, while trying to eke out a living in bitterly harsh conditions, including drought.
Like many others, he abandoned that spartan existence, after a year. During the interim, he had been featured in the local newspaper, joined a literary society, sung in a church choir, painted floral scenes, read his Bible, sewed, darned, and spun cloth, when not tending to reluctant crops. He never had a wife. Gary Kremer has identified a female romantic interest at Tuskegee that he maintained for three years.
He was educated at Iowa State University, graduating in 1896, when he joined Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute in Macon County, Alabama, as the agricultural/horticultual department at that, then fledgling, institution founded by Washington in 1881. There joint gifts and determination occasionally led to disputations over the years, but “for the good of the race,” they toughed it out triumphantly.
Kremer's book accords recognition to Carver as the original “chemurgist,” now a multi-billion dollar industry in which widely diverse products are synthesized from organic substances. He is best known for his chemurgy, particularly as pertains to the sweet potato, peanut, and soy bean, from which he derived hundreds of practical applications, which he imparted, gratis, to the world.
Dr. Carver was a man of great faith, whose trust in God was complete. He recognized no distinction between the Bible and science, as extremists on both sides needlessly argue. He quotes from the Old Testament book of Job 12:7-10 (NIV): 7 “But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;8 or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you.9 Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?10 In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.” Carver also explains that “Science is the truth” in response to John 4:24: “God is a spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
Buy the book, read it and be blessed!
