He was born a slave around 1865. After being born he and his mother were kidnapped. George Washington Carver was recovered but his mother was never found. So the slave owner raised him as a house servant because he was a sickly child as a result of the kidnapping. This is where he grew to love the plants.
After slavery was abolished he applied at a university and was accepted but after they saw that he was an African American they would not allow him to attend. But that did not stop him he kept trying to get a college education. Finally he was accepted and attended Simpson College in Iowa as the first African American in the school. Then he transferred to Iowa State where he was also the first African American student and studied art. He was a good but not great painter, but the art teacher noticed that all his painting had very detailed plants. So she encouraged him to convert to the horticulture department. He became the first African American to graduate from Iowa State with a Master of Science degree in bacterial botany and agriculture. He was immediately hired at the university as a professor.
He later left Iowa State to start up the Agriculture Department at Tuskegee University in Alabama. He started there with nothing, so he collected items from the dump to start his lab. He had a great desire to help the ex-slaves to prosper. He warned people about over extending the land by continually growing the same crop in a field. He warned people about the boll weevil would ruin their cotton crops. But he specialized in finding uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes and soybeans. He developed food products, adhesives, dyes, rubber substitutes and hundreds of other products from these crops. His agricultural contributions, such as crop rotation, greatly improved the farming industry.
George Washington Carver died in 1943 after a lifetime commitment and selfless dedication to agricultural research.