Neil DeGrasse Tyson n PBS host, public intellectual and a leading astrophysicist n was emphatic about the importance of keeping alive the legacy of pioneering American scientist George Washington Carver in exhibits like the one currently on display at the Missouri History Museum.
“If you come up as an African-American student and want to know what is possible and wonder if social forces will make it impossible for you to achieve what you want to achieve, looking at the track record of someone like Carver can give you the confidence that what you want to achieve is possible,” Tyson told the American.
As the Missouri History Museum points out, “George Washington Carver (1864n1943) may have been born a slave and orphaned as an infant, but he went on to become one of our nation’s most innovative scientists,” working at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute to pioneer a large number of new technologies and concepts in the plant sciences.
Born in Missouri, Carver could not have known that the state’s largest region would emerge as a critical leader in the plant sciences. Roger Beachy, founding president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, said the researchers at his center are following paths blazed by Carver.
“Dr. Carver really did espouse two foundational principles of our center n the importance of food and agriculture in community development and poverty alleviation, and the importance of plants to innovations in medicine, fibers, fabrics, plastics,” Beachy told the American.
“Carver went way beyond the scientists of his time to predict the future, if you like.”
Robert Archibald, president of the Missouri History Museum, which brought the Carver exhibition to St. Louis from the Field Museum in Chicago, also is struck by the humanitarian basis of Carver’s scientific work, which Beachy said continues to inspire research at the Danforth Center.
“What fascinates me most is he was never in it for the money,” Archibald said.
“He used all the scientific knowledge he had amassed to improve the lives of the people around him, starting with African-American sharecroppers. He was a pioneering geneticist, but he also was a great humanitarian.”
Peter Raven, president of the Missouri Botanical Garden, agreed with Archibald in nearly the same precise terms.
“Dr. George Washington Carver was an outstanding scientist who greatly influenced 19th and 20th century agriculture and education,” Raven said.
“He left a legacy as one of America’s greatest scientists, teachers, humanitarians and advocates for productive, sustainable agriculture. He was both timeless and far ahead of his time in his outlook and his accomplishments.”
Beachy and Archibald both remarked upon how Carver turned down more lucrative opportunities from burgeoning corporate industrial America to toil in the relatively humble setting of Tuskegee.
“Carver was a crusader for the welfare of people, especially his people, African Americans,” Archibald said.
“He dedicated his life to their welfare, despite Ford and Edison trying to recruit him with offers of huge sums of money n he stuck with Tuskegee and his vision of improving the lot of African Americans.”
Tyson insists that Carver’s excellence as a scientist n advocating crops that did not deplete the soil, pioneering plant genetics and pointing the way to manifold productive uses of plants n also improves the leadership of the majority community by challenging it.
“The fact of George Washington Carver and the possibilities he opens up is a force that operates not only on the black community but the white community as well,” Tyson said.
“When confronted with Carver, you have to use the word ‘smart’ applied to a black person. Even if you were uncomfortable using the word ‘smart’ applied to black people before, you’ll have to get used to it.”
Doug King, president of the Saint Louis Science Center, emphatically is not an example of a white person with any difficulty acknowledging intelligence in African Americans. But he admits the Missouri History Museum exhibit has been an eye opener for him.
“If you ask what is the image of a scientist, you might get a white guy in a white lab coat with crazy hair,” King said.
“It’s really damaging to women and minorities when they don’t see themselves represented in the scientific field.”
If the president of the Saint Louis Science Center is eagerly absorbing new information from the Carver exhibit, it is safe to say that everyone in St. Louis stands to learn from this major exhibition, which remains at the history museum through Black History Month, closing March 1.
“I have learned more about Carver in the last two weeks than I learned the rest of my life,” King said.
“If you had asked me before this exhibit, I would have known Carver did something with peanuts. There was so much more to him than that. He was the father of science in agriculture and he helped to create the way we feed the world today.”
Beachy passionately insisted that Carver is much more than a museum piece at the Danforth Center n he is a guide for future progress.
“What Carver did then is actually what we do now, what has come to be known as the greening of the future,” Beachy said.
“Carver recognized that we needed to get beyond biofeuls into vital industrial uses of plants and novel industrial products like plastics, fine lubricants, oils, synthetic fibers. There are many ways to go, if you will, back to the future, back to what Dr. Carver taught us then.”
