Speech I Wrote About George Washington Carver

Greetings!

Who is someone that influenced many areas of agriculture and industry, even though the odds were stacked against him? George Washington Carver, a name that just about everyone knows in America, would be the man. I would now like to take the time to briefly introduce him and his great achievements to you. He was born a slave in 1864, in Diamond Grove, Missouri, and shortly thereafter became an orphan, due to he and his mother being kidnapped and separated, and was adopted by Moses and Susan Carver, according to the National Park Service. George, a sickly child, had fallen in love with nature and desired to learn agriculture more than anything, yet education was a struggle for him due to his racial identity. Finally, he found a home at Iowa Agricultural College, now Iowa State University, where he gained a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Science degree in bacterial botany and agriculture.

Later on, Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute, asked George Washington Carver to serve as the school’s Director of Agriculture, according to the State Historical Society of Missouri. While he was there, he did research, studying the peanut, the sweet potato and other valuable crops. He found many uses for each. Not only did he find new recipes for each item, but he also developed industrial uses for them as well, such as ink, cosmetics and toiletries, medicines, paper and so much more, according to the National Park Service. All in all, he came up with over 325 uses for the peanut alone and nearly 200 for the sweet potato.

Besides inventing so many ideas of new uses for these crops, George Washington Carver also studied soil depletion and realized that cotton, the main crop of the time, was draining the soil of much needed nutrients to keep the crop up, and developed a new method of crop rotation to replenish the soil of the lost nutrients in between planting, according to the New York Housing Authority, who has named one of their buildings after him. Washington set up a mobile classroom, going around educating farmers about how to go about this, and although they listened with much enthusiasm, he really didn’t make much headway, as the banks would only finance cotton crops, but eventually they did learn and the new idea took hold, according to the History Channel’s Modern Marvels Episode: George Washington Carver Technology.

As great as all these achievements, which he did are, including but not limited to finding over 325 uses for the peanut and almost 200 use for the sweet potato, the reason that I feel that George Washington Carver needs to be commemorated is due to his allegiance and faithfulness to God. Many people who reveal Carver’s biography give the glory to him for all of his inventions, but he would not have wanted that. George Washington Carver was a pious man, always giving credit to the Lord for revealing new ideas to him. If someone would inquire as to where he got all his ideas, he would respond, “God gave them to me,” says the Christian Broadcasting Network.
If ever there was a humble man, hidden so in the Lord, in our modern times, George Washington Carver was the man. I am honored to read and learn about him, for his accomplishments, and his crediting the Lord with showing them to him, and I think that we should all ask God for such humility and understanding that this man was blessed with. He is a beautiful example of how one can get closer to the Lord saying, “We get closer to God as we get more intimately and understandingly acquainted with the things He created. I know of nothing more inspiring than making discoveries for one’s self,” according to Christian Entertainment for Children, who lists this quote.

© 2010 Kimberly Padilla, A.A Religion