Having left school at the age of fifteen with no graduation, O levels or A Levels, I feel fortunate to have been invited to speak at some of the finest universities in the world. Many other less well known universities also stand out in my mind, for one reason or another. But if one rises above the rest my mind turns to Tuskegee University in Alabama, the first black university of the south which rose up soon after the US Civil War and has since become a National Monument, thanks in a large part to two huge characters in American life. Booker T Washington and George Washington Carver. I happened to be walking by there one day in 1991, and got invited to speak to a class of around forty students and then was given a tour of a small museum dedicated to George Washington Carver. His story of how he revolutionized the economy of the southern states and helped bring much needed nourishment to the poor farmers and labourers who were struggling thanks to a dependence on one crop, cotton, I have always found to be inspirational. He did this doing something incredibly inventive yet at the same time very simple. He showed people over 100 ways to use the peanut! And hey presto! Change. Not by telling people what to do, but change by showing them what he could do with a peanut. He was a scientist, teacher, inventor and agrarian and life for him began most likely as a slave. On July 14, 1943,[36] President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated $30,000 for the George Washington Carver National Monument west-southwest of Diamond, Missouri—the area where Carver had spent time in his childhood. This was the first national monument dedicated to an African American and the first to honor someone other than a president. The 210-acre (0.8 km2) national monument complex includes a bust of Carver, a ¾-mile nature trail, a museum, the 1881 Moses Carver house, and the Carver cemetery. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Carver
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 17:48:15 +0000
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