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George Washington Carver: A Life
Nearly every American can cite at least one of the accomplishments of George Washington Carver. The many tributes honoring his contributions to scientific advancement and black history include a national monument bearing his name, a U.S.-minted coin featuring his likeness, and induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Born into slavery, Carver earned a master’s degree at Iowa State Agricultural College and went on to become that university’s first black faculty member. A keen painter who chose agricultural studies over art, his research into peanuts and sweet potatoes—crops that would replenish the cotton-leached soil of the South—helped spare multitudes of sharecroppers from poverty. Despite Carver’s lifelong difficulties with systemic racial prejudice, when he died in 1943, millions of Americans mourned the passing of one of the nation’s most honored and well-known scientists. Scores of children’s books celebrate the contributions of this prolific botanist, but no biographer has fully examined both his personal life and career until now.
Christina Vella offers a thorough biography of George Washington Carver, including in-depth details of his relationships with, his friends, colleagues, supporters, and those he loved.. Despite the exceptional trajectory of his career, Carver was not immune to the racism of the Jim Crow era or the privations and hardships of the Great Depression and two world wars. Yet throughout this tumultuous period, his scientific achievements aligned him with equally extraordinary friends, including Teddy Roosevelt, Mohandas Gandhi, Henry A. Wallace, and Henry Ford.
In pursuit of the man behind the historical figure, Vella discovers an unassuming intellectual with a quirky sense of humor, striking eccentricities, and an unwavering religious faith. She explores Carver’s anguished dealings with Booker T. Washington across their nineteen years working together at the Tuskegee Institute—a turbulent partnership often fraught with jealousy. Uneasy in personal relationships, Carver lost one woman he loved to suicide and, years later, directed his devotion toward a white man.
A prodigious and generous scholar whose life was shaped by struggle and heartbreak as well as success and fame, George Washington Carver remains a key figure in the history of southern agriculture, botanical advancement, and the struggle for civil rights. Vella’s extensively researched biography offers a complex and compelling portrait of one of the most brilliant men of the last century.
Christina Vella offers a thorough biography of George Washington Carver, including in-depth details of his relationships with, his friends, colleagues, supporters, and those he loved.. Despite the exceptional trajectory of his career, Carver was not immune to the racism of the Jim Crow era or the privations and hardships of the Great Depression and two world wars. Yet throughout this tumultuous period, his scientific achievements aligned him with equally extraordinary friends, including Teddy Roosevelt, Mohandas Gandhi, Henry A. Wallace, and Henry Ford.
In pursuit of the man behind the historical figure, Vella discovers an unassuming intellectual with a quirky sense of humor, striking eccentricities, and an unwavering religious faith. She explores Carver’s anguished dealings with Booker T. Washington across their nineteen years working together at the Tuskegee Institute—a turbulent partnership often fraught with jealousy. Uneasy in personal relationships, Carver lost one woman he loved to suicide and, years later, directed his devotion toward a white man.
A prodigious and generous scholar whose life was shaped by struggle and heartbreak as well as success and fame, George Washington Carver remains a key figure in the history of southern agriculture, botanical advancement, and the struggle for civil rights. Vella’s extensively researched biography offers a complex and compelling portrait of one of the most brilliant men of the last century.
456 pages, Hardcover
First published September 9, 2015
About the author
Christina Vella
5 books5 followersChristina Vella was a writer, historian of modern Europe, and adjunct professor at Tulane University in New Orleans.
Her first book, Intimate Enemies: The Two Worlds of the Baroness de Pontalba, was entered for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. It was published by Louisiana State University Press in 1997 and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and The Times-Picayune. It chronicles the life and career of Micaela Almonester, the woman responsible for building the Embassy of the United States in Paris and the Pontalba Buildings in New Orleans. In 2003, Intimate Enemies was adapted by Thea Musgrave as the opera Pontalba, which premiered in New Orleans in October of that year.
Vella's later books include The Hitler Kiss: A Memoir of the Czech Resistance (2002), co-authored with Radomir Luza, and Indecent Secrets - The Infamous Murri Murder Affair (2006), a history of the Murri murder trial which took place in Bologna, Italy in 1905.
Vella received her Ph.D. in European and U.S. history from Tulane University in New Orleans. A professor of history for over twenty years, she now devotes most of her time to writing and lecturing. She frequently serves as a consultant and writer for the U.S. Department of State.
She is the recipient of the 2010 Preservation Award from the Foundation for Historical Louisiana.
(from Wikipedia)
Her first book, Intimate Enemies: The Two Worlds of the Baroness de Pontalba, was entered for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. It was published by Louisiana State University Press in 1997 and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and The Times-Picayune. It chronicles the life and career of Micaela Almonester, the woman responsible for building the Embassy of the United States in Paris and the Pontalba Buildings in New Orleans. In 2003, Intimate Enemies was adapted by Thea Musgrave as the opera Pontalba, which premiered in New Orleans in October of that year.
Vella's later books include The Hitler Kiss: A Memoir of the Czech Resistance (2002), co-authored with Radomir Luza, and Indecent Secrets - The Infamous Murri Murder Affair (2006), a history of the Murri murder trial which took place in Bologna, Italy in 1905.
Vella received her Ph.D. in European and U.S. history from Tulane University in New Orleans. A professor of history for over twenty years, she now devotes most of her time to writing and lecturing. She frequently serves as a consultant and writer for the U.S. Department of State.
She is the recipient of the 2010 Preservation Award from the Foundation for Historical Louisiana.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
February 9, 2017
Like most Southern children, I had a vague sense of the scientific accomplishments of George Washington Carver -- 300 uses for a peanut, right? I'm so glad that I read this book -- I had no idea how interesting he truly was! Vella is by no means a neutral biographer -- she calls it like she sees it, rather than trying to present the facts with no authorial commentary. (She totally had me when, describing how Carver was unable to attend the school in his area because of his race, she acidly comments that the school catered to its white mediocrities at the expense of its one black genius. Yep, that's about the size of it. Carver goes on to commute many longer miles to attend a school that would take him.) I had no previous idea about the complicated tension of his working relationship with Booker T. Washington, or how underfunded within Tuskegee his programs were at the time, or how often he had to flee racially motivated violence. His accomplishments are all the more impressive given the scarcity of the resources he was working with! I also had no idea about his mystical religious tendencies, or that he was bisexual and fell in love with a man across racial lines at a time when even the thought of that would get you killed. But the most engaging part of the book for me was the constant exploration of his character, mild and kind, curious and determined. He must have had legendary patience to persevere through the difficulties he encountered without table-flipping and telling everyone off, heh. He's undoubtedly a heroic figure, and in a mold that doesn't look a lot like what we tend to value in American society now. He's quiet rather than assertive, patient rather than pushy, submissive rather than alpha-wolf. And he got so much done, both for science and for the South. For sheer effective good done in the world, one could do much worse than to model one's self after George Washington Carver.
April 12, 2025
Embarrassingly I’ve never heard of George Washington Carver until I heard his name on the show “Oz”. I wasn’t even aware of him being the “peanut guy”.
A man who was born a slave changed the world with his agricultural innovations. What an extraordinary man.
A man who was born a slave changed the world with his agricultural innovations. What an extraordinary man.
February 25, 2020
This is an excellently researched book about a man who has been reduced to being “the peanut guy”. It explores his incredibly humble upbringing, his tumultuous relationship with Booker T. Washington, and his odd relationship with Henry Ford. It goes in depth into his work and his faith and sheds light on the almost cultish devotion that his students had to him. There is a look at one his relationships with a former protege that leads us to believe the older man had a fondness for the younger that went beyond mere mentorship, the author goes out of her way to not slander either party. A fascinating look into a great man’s life.
August 19, 2018
Carver’s list of accomplishments and inventions is really amazing; much more than just a man who worked with peanuts. He was a pioneer in researching and inventing different uses of plants with the goal of helping his African American brothers get out of poverty. He has a really interesting story worth reading. This book sometimes seems to branch off and focus on other people however I enjoyed learning more about Booker T. Washington, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford to name a few.
April 5, 2022
A fascinating story of an amazing mind. What moved me most was Carver's ability to guide his research toward serving needs: i.e. as he observed farmers struggling in his community, he sought out (and readily shared) ideas for what type of crops would grow best in the particular soil of the area, what methods would help produce the most abundant crops, and what inventive ways could those crops be utilized to serve the families' needs.
This book was also interesting because it paints a pretty frustrating portrait of Booker T. Washington, someone who I'd otherwise only heard described heroically. One can't help but wonder how much Carver's work was ultimately stifled by Washington.
[Read 2021]
This book was also interesting because it paints a pretty frustrating portrait of Booker T. Washington, someone who I'd otherwise only heard described heroically. One can't help but wonder how much Carver's work was ultimately stifled by Washington.
[Read 2021]
January 16, 2026
Super well written and compelling biography of one of my scientific and educational heroes. Carver combined encyclopedic scientific knowledge, technology knowledge-how, and a genuine appreciation of beauty to be a one of a kind American mind. It is amazing he was able to accomplish what he did given he was constantly being undermined and under resourced by his superiors and colleagues. George Washington Carver is one of the GOATs.
August 13, 2026
ME, worriedly, every so often: "Please don't tell anyone how much I hate Booker T. Washington so they don't think I'm racist."
ALL FAMILY MEMBERS: "Okay, but you're the most likely person to tell someone that."
And fine, it's true, so here we go:
I hate Booker T. Washington. I think he did a really terrible job running the Tuskegee Institute (he did a really great job founding it--he just did a really terrible job running it!), I think a lot of what he said and did was wrongheaded, I think he should have been open to other leaders' ideas of how best to lift up their people instead of just stubbornly following his own personal brand of black-and-white thinking, I think he got distracted by showmanship too often.
But most of all, I hate him because he was really, really, REALLY mean to George Washington Carver for literally no reason. Washington acted like his whole purpose in life was to serve his people, and then turned around and stole away probably the greatest genius of that time and hid him away and made him work like a dog without any of the resources he could have so easily provided and then when Carver created miracles anyway, Washington acted like those miracles were garbage and just continued trying to stomp Carver down.
And for some reason beyond all comprehension, or really just because that's the kind of guy he was, George Washington Carver LOVED Booker T. Washington, loved him and admired him and had so much affection for him, and in return, Washington's every action toward Carver (after, of course, he'd gone to all the trouble to woo Carver into taking that job at Tuskegee) was filled with just palpable contempt. In George Washington Carver: A Life, author Christina Vella writes that every Christmas, Carver made these beautiful hand-painted Christmas cards for all his favorite people. They were masterpieces. Washington always got one, and barely even acknowledged them. But the next year, Carver would go right ahead and paint him another beautiful masterpiece, and Washington would again be all like, "Meh." But after Washington died (yay!) and another guy took over as head of Tuskegee, Carver went to all the trouble to make that guy his very own hand-painted Christmas card, too, because he was just that nice.
And that guy was so touched that he wrote Carver a genuine multi-paged THANK-YOU NOTE FOR THE CHRISTMAS CARD. THAT'S HOW MUCH HE LOVED IT.
Ugh, Booker T. Washington!
Honestly next I should probably read a proper biography of Booker T. Washington, because right now he exists solely in my mind as a cartoon villain.
He really was VERY mean to Carver, though.
Which I feel like is a pattern that started when Carver was a newborn! Susan and Moses Carver, the people who raised him from the time of his mother’s abduction (at least the official story is an abduction--I’d tell you what I think happened, but I feel like I have already expressed an unhealthy amount of George Washington Carver-centric conspiracy theories in my life and I think I'm already not getting invited to parties about it) to the age of nine or ten, allowed that nine- or ten-year-old to leave home and figure out his own means of sustenance and support when little George, with a knack for learning, decided that an education was what he really, really, really wanted for himself. Vella writes somewhat bemusedly that George didn’t seem to remember much of his childhood and/or would often simply tell some amusing anecdote that he’d contradict in a later interview. She attributes it to absent-mindedness, in that his focus was always elsewhere, but honestly I don’t buy it. As an adult, this dude seemed VERY focused on interpersonal relationships. He treasured his friends, and was kind to fans and acquaintances. I feel like if he couldn’t remember his childhood enough to even give a consistent count for the number of siblings he had, there was a reason for it. And if it wasn’t a memory issue but instead that he didn’t want to talk about his childhood and fiction was easier, well, there was a reason for that, too.
Thank goodness little unhoused Carver met people along the way who did help and nurture and support him, although he clearly witnessed and experienced a lot of trauma, too. And he made his own way. He cleaned houses, he took in laundry, and Vella tells a story in which as a child he talked his way into a job as a personal chef and to cover the fact that he didn’t know how to cook he got the lady of the house to demonstrate how to make every single dish so that he could, as he told her, “make it the way you like it.” And after that, he did!
After making his own way in the world, traveling to wherever there was a school he could learn in, pausing his enrollment periodically as he ran out of money, he finally got enough education to be accepted to Highland College in Kansas. He used the rest of his money to get himself there, but when he showed up, the head of the college was all like, “Oh. Yeah, we don’t actually admit Negros,” and Carver had to simply walk away, broke and with his dreams dashed AGAIN.
I hate you, too, Highland College.
Carver was, if anything, even more poor when he was finally able to attend Simpson College, an art school, and then after that, thanks to a teacher who took him under her wing, Iowa State College. But I feel like Iowa State was where he was the happiest in his entire life. He still cleaned and took in laundry, but Vella notes that his teachers and schoolmates and neighbors would make sure he at least had tons of work, because that’s the only way they could get him to take their money. In 1893, four of his paintings won entry into the Chicago World’s Fair, and Carver was going to get to go see them there. But all his clothes were garbage. So one day, some of his classmates literally kidnapped him off the street, manhandled him into a department store, forced him to try on clothes, and then bought him a beautiful new suit, completely against his will.
And you guys. I cry every time I tell this story, because it is literally so sweet and SO insane, because Carver basically NEVER TOOK THAT SUIT OFF AGAIN IN HIS ENTIRE LIFE. I mean, like, I’m sure he had pajamas, and he spent a lot of time in a lab coat, but if he was dressed up and out and about, he was wearing that suit. That twenty-year-old suit. That thirty-year-old suit. That FORTY-YEAR-OLD SUIT. It was always clean--Carver, after all, was a laundry man!--and it always had a fresh flower in its lapel, but people started to not be able to tell what color it was supposed to be. It was probably, like, dry rotting or something at some point. And sometimes, someone would be like, “Buddy, you want to get yourself a new suit or something?” And Carver, even after he finally had some money--although he never had money like he was supposed to, because Tuskegee never paid him a decent salary, much less the salary he deserved--would just be like, “But clearly I already have a suit I am literally wearing it right now?”
So here’s the thing: Vella makes very clear that Carver was super happy at Iowa State. Some people were for sure racist towards him but a lot of people were not, he had friends, he had mentors, he was learning and he loved it, he was blowing everyone away with how smart he was and how nice and how good he was at everything, and he already had an excellent job lined up right there as soon as he graduated, because these professors did NOT want to let him out of their sight, he was so awesome.
Enter Booker T. Washington.
And okay, to be fair to Washington, the people of Alabama, Black and white but especially Black, were just absolutely beyond destitute at this time. Anything that anyone could do to help them was a very good thing. But Washington had a very black and white, VERY limited idea of what was best for Black people as a whole, and he didn’t give a fuck that it wasn’t what many Black people wanted for themselves--he was going to do for them what HE wanted to do for them, and that’s it.
And what he wanted to do for them wasn’t so much to offer a proper school education, although to be fair Tuskegee did teach literacy and numeracy, but essentially to offer more sophisticated farming and industrial education. I think it was this weird wanting to serve his people but also hating intellectualism vibe that Vella describes that made him 1) work as hard as he did to woo Carver away from his perfect Iowa State prospects, but also 2) shit on everything Carver tried to do and act contemptuous of all his accomplishments and thwart all his efforts because Carver was clearly very intellectually gifted and treasured intellect, and that shone through as much as his kindness did.
So Washington refused to fund Carver’s teaching lab, causing Carver to resort to garbage picking and DIY to stock it. Carver scored a very prestigious federal grant to host an experiment station at the school, and Washington refused to assign him a consistent staff to work it. When Carver succeeded with the station anyway and published useful educational brochures, Washington refused to have them printed. It got so bad that when Washington learned that Carver had been teaching--for free! in his free time!--an extremely popular Bible study class for the past three years, he immediately shut it down. Tell me one reason why he’d do that that’s not from simple spite!
Also, I’m very open to the possibility that the author is biased against Booker T. Washington and has simply passed it onto me. Like I said, I need to read a proper bio about him!
But you know what? Carver took Washington’s contempt and Tuskegee’s garbage and with them, he performed wonders. He genuinely saved Alabama, and the South as a whole, with his research and outreach. Enslavers had used their access to free labor to monoculture cotton to such an extent that the land was completely devoid of nutrients, and so everyone who was still trying to live off the land had resorted to simply growing more and more of that same monoculture just to chase any kind of profit. People were malnourished because they’d converted their kitchen gardens to cotton. Same with their livestock yards. Part of Carver’s extensive research and outreach was finding nutritious, cheap crops and livestock that fed people, turned a profit, and also healed the land. Sweet potatoes. Hogs. PEANUTS!!! People were also longing for more elevated lifestyles but weren’t sure what that would consist of, so were spending their precious money on stupid stuff like fancy clocks and organs that represented culture to them (tangent, but I thought this detail was VERY interesting, because way north in De Smet, South Dakota, the Ingalls family was also spending their precious money on a stupid organ!). So Carver researched methods of making beautiful paints cheaply from the local soils, then taught everyone how to paint their homes and furnishings so they could have pretty things around them without wasting their money.
Another tangent: all throughout the book, Vella just keeps on referring to Carver’s “woman’s voice.” She genuinely goes out of her way to bring this up ALL THE TIME. Carver meets someone famous--they must be surprised to hear his woman’s voice! Carver gives a lecture--people probably thought it was strange hearing a woman’s voice! At one point, I swear she is absolutely giddy because Carver met a woman whom she says had an unusually deep voice, and she’s genuinely all, “OMG I BET IT SOUNDED SO WEIRD! BECAUSE HE SOUNDED LIKE A WOMAN AND SHE SOUNDED LIKE A MAN! AND WHEN THEY TALKED TO EACH OTHER IT WAS LIKE THE OTHER PERSON’S VOICE SHOULD BE COMING OUT OF EACH OF THEIR MOUTHS! HAHAHAHAHA!!!”
So anyway, I kept reading her taking these shots at Carver’s voice and being all, “Dude! Why is she obsessed with saying he sounds like a woman?” So I got on YouTube to see if there are any videos of Carver speaking.
There are. And fine, he sounds like a woman. Just… Vella acts weirdly excited about it, okay?
Anyway, *I* was very excited in the book when Booker T. Washington died, even though it caused Carver to go into genuine mourning for months and also donate half a year’s worth of his pitiful salary to a memorial for that asshole. I’m just so mad at how much of his life he gave up for that man.
There’s another whole weird part of the biography concerning how Carver apparently also gave up another huge chunk of his life to massaging people with peanut oil, because it got published in the newspapers as a miracle cure, causing people to show up from everywhere all the time asking him to, and he was too nice to say no. It’s super weird, though.
Another weird part: although everyone online seems to think that Carver was queer because he was life partners with the lab assistant he had late in his career, Austin W. Curtis, Jr., Vella does not think that this was true at all. Honestly, she low-key makes Curtis out to be a villain who made secret deals behind Carver’s back to profit off of their professional partnership and their friendship. Instead, she puts forth the VERY convincing case that Carver was queer because he was deeply in love with a much younger man whom he met through church stuff. He wrote him obsessive letters for years, letters in which you can literally feel the agonized longing, translated into Jesus-speak. This besottedness went mostly unreciprocated, poor dude. Honestly, I think Carver was probably aroace. His letters of religious fervor to that dude did sound pretty sexy, but I dunno, religion can be weird like that.
Eventually, Henry Ford befriended Carver and built him the fanciest of fancy labs. But you guys, you might as well go ahead and start crying with me again, because by then, Carver was too frail to get much use out of it. He just always worked so hard, and I feel like he never got exactly what he deserved out of life. I guess he’d be proud of his beautiful George Washington Carver Museum at Tuskegee, although I’m low-key mad about it, but his other memorial is literally at his enslavers’ house sooo…
So… I dunno, you guys. All I know about George Washington Carver I learned from his national park site and this biography and some really sketchy online content that I do not believe. People are such weirdos. So, did Vella do me dirty? Is Booker T. Washington actually awesome and now I hate him for no reason? Was Curtis really Carver’s lover and Vella simply won’t say?
Is it super weird that she kept saying he had a woman’s voice? I mean sure, it’s high-pitched--okay, it’s remarkably high-pitched--but she’s being weird about it, right?
ALL FAMILY MEMBERS: "Okay, but you're the most likely person to tell someone that."
And fine, it's true, so here we go:
I hate Booker T. Washington. I think he did a really terrible job running the Tuskegee Institute (he did a really great job founding it--he just did a really terrible job running it!), I think a lot of what he said and did was wrongheaded, I think he should have been open to other leaders' ideas of how best to lift up their people instead of just stubbornly following his own personal brand of black-and-white thinking, I think he got distracted by showmanship too often.
But most of all, I hate him because he was really, really, REALLY mean to George Washington Carver for literally no reason. Washington acted like his whole purpose in life was to serve his people, and then turned around and stole away probably the greatest genius of that time and hid him away and made him work like a dog without any of the resources he could have so easily provided and then when Carver created miracles anyway, Washington acted like those miracles were garbage and just continued trying to stomp Carver down.
And for some reason beyond all comprehension, or really just because that's the kind of guy he was, George Washington Carver LOVED Booker T. Washington, loved him and admired him and had so much affection for him, and in return, Washington's every action toward Carver (after, of course, he'd gone to all the trouble to woo Carver into taking that job at Tuskegee) was filled with just palpable contempt. In George Washington Carver: A Life, author Christina Vella writes that every Christmas, Carver made these beautiful hand-painted Christmas cards for all his favorite people. They were masterpieces. Washington always got one, and barely even acknowledged them. But the next year, Carver would go right ahead and paint him another beautiful masterpiece, and Washington would again be all like, "Meh." But after Washington died (yay!) and another guy took over as head of Tuskegee, Carver went to all the trouble to make that guy his very own hand-painted Christmas card, too, because he was just that nice.
And that guy was so touched that he wrote Carver a genuine multi-paged THANK-YOU NOTE FOR THE CHRISTMAS CARD. THAT'S HOW MUCH HE LOVED IT.
Ugh, Booker T. Washington!
Honestly next I should probably read a proper biography of Booker T. Washington, because right now he exists solely in my mind as a cartoon villain.
He really was VERY mean to Carver, though.
Which I feel like is a pattern that started when Carver was a newborn! Susan and Moses Carver, the people who raised him from the time of his mother’s abduction (at least the official story is an abduction--I’d tell you what I think happened, but I feel like I have already expressed an unhealthy amount of George Washington Carver-centric conspiracy theories in my life and I think I'm already not getting invited to parties about it) to the age of nine or ten, allowed that nine- or ten-year-old to leave home and figure out his own means of sustenance and support when little George, with a knack for learning, decided that an education was what he really, really, really wanted for himself. Vella writes somewhat bemusedly that George didn’t seem to remember much of his childhood and/or would often simply tell some amusing anecdote that he’d contradict in a later interview. She attributes it to absent-mindedness, in that his focus was always elsewhere, but honestly I don’t buy it. As an adult, this dude seemed VERY focused on interpersonal relationships. He treasured his friends, and was kind to fans and acquaintances. I feel like if he couldn’t remember his childhood enough to even give a consistent count for the number of siblings he had, there was a reason for it. And if it wasn’t a memory issue but instead that he didn’t want to talk about his childhood and fiction was easier, well, there was a reason for that, too.
Thank goodness little unhoused Carver met people along the way who did help and nurture and support him, although he clearly witnessed and experienced a lot of trauma, too. And he made his own way. He cleaned houses, he took in laundry, and Vella tells a story in which as a child he talked his way into a job as a personal chef and to cover the fact that he didn’t know how to cook he got the lady of the house to demonstrate how to make every single dish so that he could, as he told her, “make it the way you like it.” And after that, he did!
After making his own way in the world, traveling to wherever there was a school he could learn in, pausing his enrollment periodically as he ran out of money, he finally got enough education to be accepted to Highland College in Kansas. He used the rest of his money to get himself there, but when he showed up, the head of the college was all like, “Oh. Yeah, we don’t actually admit Negros,” and Carver had to simply walk away, broke and with his dreams dashed AGAIN.
I hate you, too, Highland College.
Carver was, if anything, even more poor when he was finally able to attend Simpson College, an art school, and then after that, thanks to a teacher who took him under her wing, Iowa State College. But I feel like Iowa State was where he was the happiest in his entire life. He still cleaned and took in laundry, but Vella notes that his teachers and schoolmates and neighbors would make sure he at least had tons of work, because that’s the only way they could get him to take their money. In 1893, four of his paintings won entry into the Chicago World’s Fair, and Carver was going to get to go see them there. But all his clothes were garbage. So one day, some of his classmates literally kidnapped him off the street, manhandled him into a department store, forced him to try on clothes, and then bought him a beautiful new suit, completely against his will.
And you guys. I cry every time I tell this story, because it is literally so sweet and SO insane, because Carver basically NEVER TOOK THAT SUIT OFF AGAIN IN HIS ENTIRE LIFE. I mean, like, I’m sure he had pajamas, and he spent a lot of time in a lab coat, but if he was dressed up and out and about, he was wearing that suit. That twenty-year-old suit. That thirty-year-old suit. That FORTY-YEAR-OLD SUIT. It was always clean--Carver, after all, was a laundry man!--and it always had a fresh flower in its lapel, but people started to not be able to tell what color it was supposed to be. It was probably, like, dry rotting or something at some point. And sometimes, someone would be like, “Buddy, you want to get yourself a new suit or something?” And Carver, even after he finally had some money--although he never had money like he was supposed to, because Tuskegee never paid him a decent salary, much less the salary he deserved--would just be like, “But clearly I already have a suit I am literally wearing it right now?”
So here’s the thing: Vella makes very clear that Carver was super happy at Iowa State. Some people were for sure racist towards him but a lot of people were not, he had friends, he had mentors, he was learning and he loved it, he was blowing everyone away with how smart he was and how nice and how good he was at everything, and he already had an excellent job lined up right there as soon as he graduated, because these professors did NOT want to let him out of their sight, he was so awesome.
Enter Booker T. Washington.
And okay, to be fair to Washington, the people of Alabama, Black and white but especially Black, were just absolutely beyond destitute at this time. Anything that anyone could do to help them was a very good thing. But Washington had a very black and white, VERY limited idea of what was best for Black people as a whole, and he didn’t give a fuck that it wasn’t what many Black people wanted for themselves--he was going to do for them what HE wanted to do for them, and that’s it.
And what he wanted to do for them wasn’t so much to offer a proper school education, although to be fair Tuskegee did teach literacy and numeracy, but essentially to offer more sophisticated farming and industrial education. I think it was this weird wanting to serve his people but also hating intellectualism vibe that Vella describes that made him 1) work as hard as he did to woo Carver away from his perfect Iowa State prospects, but also 2) shit on everything Carver tried to do and act contemptuous of all his accomplishments and thwart all his efforts because Carver was clearly very intellectually gifted and treasured intellect, and that shone through as much as his kindness did.
So Washington refused to fund Carver’s teaching lab, causing Carver to resort to garbage picking and DIY to stock it. Carver scored a very prestigious federal grant to host an experiment station at the school, and Washington refused to assign him a consistent staff to work it. When Carver succeeded with the station anyway and published useful educational brochures, Washington refused to have them printed. It got so bad that when Washington learned that Carver had been teaching--for free! in his free time!--an extremely popular Bible study class for the past three years, he immediately shut it down. Tell me one reason why he’d do that that’s not from simple spite!
Also, I’m very open to the possibility that the author is biased against Booker T. Washington and has simply passed it onto me. Like I said, I need to read a proper bio about him!
But you know what? Carver took Washington’s contempt and Tuskegee’s garbage and with them, he performed wonders. He genuinely saved Alabama, and the South as a whole, with his research and outreach. Enslavers had used their access to free labor to monoculture cotton to such an extent that the land was completely devoid of nutrients, and so everyone who was still trying to live off the land had resorted to simply growing more and more of that same monoculture just to chase any kind of profit. People were malnourished because they’d converted their kitchen gardens to cotton. Same with their livestock yards. Part of Carver’s extensive research and outreach was finding nutritious, cheap crops and livestock that fed people, turned a profit, and also healed the land. Sweet potatoes. Hogs. PEANUTS!!! People were also longing for more elevated lifestyles but weren’t sure what that would consist of, so were spending their precious money on stupid stuff like fancy clocks and organs that represented culture to them (tangent, but I thought this detail was VERY interesting, because way north in De Smet, South Dakota, the Ingalls family was also spending their precious money on a stupid organ!). So Carver researched methods of making beautiful paints cheaply from the local soils, then taught everyone how to paint their homes and furnishings so they could have pretty things around them without wasting their money.
Another tangent: all throughout the book, Vella just keeps on referring to Carver’s “woman’s voice.” She genuinely goes out of her way to bring this up ALL THE TIME. Carver meets someone famous--they must be surprised to hear his woman’s voice! Carver gives a lecture--people probably thought it was strange hearing a woman’s voice! At one point, I swear she is absolutely giddy because Carver met a woman whom she says had an unusually deep voice, and she’s genuinely all, “OMG I BET IT SOUNDED SO WEIRD! BECAUSE HE SOUNDED LIKE A WOMAN AND SHE SOUNDED LIKE A MAN! AND WHEN THEY TALKED TO EACH OTHER IT WAS LIKE THE OTHER PERSON’S VOICE SHOULD BE COMING OUT OF EACH OF THEIR MOUTHS! HAHAHAHAHA!!!”
So anyway, I kept reading her taking these shots at Carver’s voice and being all, “Dude! Why is she obsessed with saying he sounds like a woman?” So I got on YouTube to see if there are any videos of Carver speaking.
There are. And fine, he sounds like a woman. Just… Vella acts weirdly excited about it, okay?
Anyway, *I* was very excited in the book when Booker T. Washington died, even though it caused Carver to go into genuine mourning for months and also donate half a year’s worth of his pitiful salary to a memorial for that asshole. I’m just so mad at how much of his life he gave up for that man.
There’s another whole weird part of the biography concerning how Carver apparently also gave up another huge chunk of his life to massaging people with peanut oil, because it got published in the newspapers as a miracle cure, causing people to show up from everywhere all the time asking him to, and he was too nice to say no. It’s super weird, though.
Another weird part: although everyone online seems to think that Carver was queer because he was life partners with the lab assistant he had late in his career, Austin W. Curtis, Jr., Vella does not think that this was true at all. Honestly, she low-key makes Curtis out to be a villain who made secret deals behind Carver’s back to profit off of their professional partnership and their friendship. Instead, she puts forth the VERY convincing case that Carver was queer because he was deeply in love with a much younger man whom he met through church stuff. He wrote him obsessive letters for years, letters in which you can literally feel the agonized longing, translated into Jesus-speak. This besottedness went mostly unreciprocated, poor dude. Honestly, I think Carver was probably aroace. His letters of religious fervor to that dude did sound pretty sexy, but I dunno, religion can be weird like that.
Eventually, Henry Ford befriended Carver and built him the fanciest of fancy labs. But you guys, you might as well go ahead and start crying with me again, because by then, Carver was too frail to get much use out of it. He just always worked so hard, and I feel like he never got exactly what he deserved out of life. I guess he’d be proud of his beautiful George Washington Carver Museum at Tuskegee, although I’m low-key mad about it, but his other memorial is literally at his enslavers’ house sooo…
So… I dunno, you guys. All I know about George Washington Carver I learned from his national park site and this biography and some really sketchy online content that I do not believe. People are such weirdos. So, did Vella do me dirty? Is Booker T. Washington actually awesome and now I hate him for no reason? Was Curtis really Carver’s lover and Vella simply won’t say?
Is it super weird that she kept saying he had a woman’s voice? I mean sure, it’s high-pitched--okay, it’s remarkably high-pitched--but she’s being weird about it, right?
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June 7, 2026This is either a book about the triumph of a man born enslaved, who rose to international prominence through genius and kindness, or it's a deeply frustrating story of how a man with the potential to change the world even more than he did was held back by racism, a terrible start in life, and exploitation by people with power over him.
The book itself is a straightforward but direct account of Carver's life, written with what appears to be access to a huge trove of letters and accounts from him and others. It loses its way a bit at the end, the last two chapters definitely meander. However, when it's good, I really enjoyed it.
The book itself is a straightforward but direct account of Carver's life, written with what appears to be access to a huge trove of letters and accounts from him and others. It loses its way a bit at the end, the last two chapters definitely meander. However, when it's good, I really enjoyed it.
January 30, 2021
I rate this two stars, not because of the subject but because of the author's penchant for writhing things as she wanted them to be instead of just writing the facts that her research uncovered. So many "he must have", or "surely". In other
Still the book was interesting because Carver was such an interesting person.
Still the book was interesting because Carver was such an interesting person.
August 9, 2021
There is a lot of information on the life of Carver with many quotes from letters. I think we get a good sense of what Carver was like, warts and all. We also get a good view of Booker T. Washington and Tuskegee and how Carver fit in. I found it a cumbersome read, but worth sticking with it to get the picture of a time and a man.
February 11, 2018
A good read. A bit scattered toward the end. Knowing so little about this amazing person until now has been my loss.
February 22, 2025
Although it's a bit of happenstance that I chose to read a modern biography of Carver at this point in time, I would note that it would have been hard to avoid him as an exemplar of the "safe" Black man at the time when I was in primary and secondary school. Also, though I really didn't think about the man for a long while, I suppose that at the back of my mind I've had the question of just how much of an exemplar Carver really was.
Vella, however, does make a strong case that Carver remains a great exemplar. This is considering his humanity, intellectual engagement, and commitment; perhaps too much commitment. While Booker T. Washington badly wanted Carver as a trophy hire for the Tuskegee Institute, the real guts of this book is how Vella documents the remarkably poor treatment that Carver received while on the school's payroll. The fact is that Carver only really flourished as a researcher once Washington passed on, as opposed to merely being the nominal manager of the school's agricultural operations. There is a whole constellation of reasons for this, but Washington was under pressure from the trustees to make the school pay for itself, whereas Carver was trying to run an experimental farm. In trying to do everything, and Washington trying to keep up appearances, nothing was done well; Washington cuts a remarkable shabby figure as an institutional leader in this telling.
From there, and the last third of Carver's life, Vella examines how the man went from being an obscure regional figure to becoming a national treasure; much helped by Carver's unlikely friendship with Henry Ford.
Going forward from this exercise, I find that I really do need to study more about the long-running conflict between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, which Carver was on the fringes of.
Vella, however, does make a strong case that Carver remains a great exemplar. This is considering his humanity, intellectual engagement, and commitment; perhaps too much commitment. While Booker T. Washington badly wanted Carver as a trophy hire for the Tuskegee Institute, the real guts of this book is how Vella documents the remarkably poor treatment that Carver received while on the school's payroll. The fact is that Carver only really flourished as a researcher once Washington passed on, as opposed to merely being the nominal manager of the school's agricultural operations. There is a whole constellation of reasons for this, but Washington was under pressure from the trustees to make the school pay for itself, whereas Carver was trying to run an experimental farm. In trying to do everything, and Washington trying to keep up appearances, nothing was done well; Washington cuts a remarkable shabby figure as an institutional leader in this telling.
From there, and the last third of Carver's life, Vella examines how the man went from being an obscure regional figure to becoming a national treasure; much helped by Carver's unlikely friendship with Henry Ford.
Going forward from this exercise, I find that I really do need to study more about the long-running conflict between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, which Carver was on the fringes of.
August 26, 2022
George Washington Carver: A Life by Christina Vella- Children’s Illustrated Colour Picture Book- The book narrates the biography of George Washington Carver, an Afro-American agricultural scientist. George Washington Carver was just a young child, he had a secret: a garden of his own. Here, he rolled dirt between his fingers to check if plants needed more rain or sun. He protected roots through harsh winters, so plants could be reborn in the spring. He trimmed flowers, spread soil, studied life cycles. And it was in this very place that George’s love of nature sprouted into something so much more. His hard work in the field was the light for his bright future. The book showcases his curiosity and love for nature from his earliest days after being born into slavery in 1864. He tended a secret garden and learned an incredible amount of knowledge from trial and error. He learned how to sew, make dyes, create medicine from plants and leaves. At the age of 12, he moved away from his childhood home and traveled through several states continuing to learn about art and agriculture. He was the first Black man to graduate from Iowa Agricultural College and he went on to teach agriculture at Tuskegee Institute. On the very last page of this book, we are left with a final thought, which appeared to be his mantra: "Regard Nature. Revere Nature. Respect Nature." The back matter includes a timeline of Carver's life, along with a bibliography and selections for further reading. Coloured illustrations help the reader in relating to the story.
January 3, 2022
Well-written and probably too-well researched, especially in consideration of the "private" letters that were published within this book and used to speculate and read things into the lives of Professor Carver and his friends. The speculation, in particular, was completely unnecessary and this is easily a 4-star book without it.
Aside from that, I found Carver's life to be compelling and also heartbreaking in consideration of the way he was oppressed by his colleagues at Tuskegee, surprisingly led by the efforts of Booker T. Washington, who practically begged Carver to leave Iowa State in order to come to the upstart Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and then (Washington) spent the rest of his life making it unreasonably difficult for Carver to carry out his life's work by refusing to fund his laboratory or professional needs, in spite of the fact of available funds.
It is absolutely amazing to consider what Carver was able to do with almost no help whatsoever. I can't help but wonder what more Carver could have accomplished if he had either stayed at Iowa State or if he had had someone to champion his efforts and provide even adequate financial support at Tuskegee.
Aside from that, I found Carver's life to be compelling and also heartbreaking in consideration of the way he was oppressed by his colleagues at Tuskegee, surprisingly led by the efforts of Booker T. Washington, who practically begged Carver to leave Iowa State in order to come to the upstart Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and then (Washington) spent the rest of his life making it unreasonably difficult for Carver to carry out his life's work by refusing to fund his laboratory or professional needs, in spite of the fact of available funds.
It is absolutely amazing to consider what Carver was able to do with almost no help whatsoever. I can't help but wonder what more Carver could have accomplished if he had either stayed at Iowa State or if he had had someone to champion his efforts and provide even adequate financial support at Tuskegee.
March 29, 2020
Amazing bio of George Washington, the details from his time at Tuskegee were incredible and gave a lot of depth to the person he was. I learned that Carver, though famous for his work with the peanut, had just as many uses for the sweet potato and may have invented a cure for polio. His relationship with Booker T. Washington, though rocky, provided the impetus for how Washington carried himself throughout his life. I have no doubt that Carver, using the little resources that he had in life, accomplished more that any other US born scientist. Living through the end of slavery and the time of segregation limited a lot about what people actually knew about the man, but this all began to come into light throughout this biography. I hope to visit many of the sites in Missouri and Alabama that Carver has had dedicated to him.
February 19, 2024
This was a wonderful, detailed look at an amazing man. I started this book with some hesitation as I had read that the author made a claim that Carver was bisexual. But as I read, I saw that this opinion was just that, an opinion based on assumptions and speculation. Carver was a dedicated, patient, loving, incredible man with a huge heart for lifting his people, and all people, to a higher place. Even when faced with open hostility due to his color, he met it with grace and dignity and this won people over to who he was and what he believed in, be it his science or his faith or both. This was well worth the time invested in the reading.
November 7, 2025
Picked this book randomly at library in town we just moved to. There was a lot more to the man than how he seems to be remembered today, with simple references to “the peanut man”. Enjoyed learning of his humble beginnings, struggles for an education and his devoted life work. An extraordinary man of many talents and interests, who achieved much with little.
December 22, 2020
A well written biography of one of the greatest of Americans. Born a slave, raised by poor white foster parents he rose to heights of fame that almost no one attains from such humble beginnings. This is a thorough a biography that one can find about who the man was.
July 19, 2021
Some very unfortunate metaphors for writing about a black person. Several times she deviated a lot from the main character. The end could have been shorter.
April 12, 2022
He was an amazing man!
November 30, 2022
"Salt of the Earth"
October 24, 2015
Overall, this is a good biography of an incredible man. There are so many difficulties with a biography of a man like Carver. Beginning his life in slavery, he never knew when he was born, not even the year. In addition, Carver was a humble man who never blew his own horn but kept a voluminous correspondence with (it seems) anyone and everyone who wrote him. Vella does a commendable job giving a survey of many of these letters. She also does a good job with the uncertainty of Carver's early life. She tells what we know, and what we suspect. When there are multiple conflicting versions available, she shares them and discusses the probability of each.
I was impressed by the overall organization of the book. Each chapter takes us further in Carver's life, yet is still topical enough. There is obviously considerable overlap, but you don't feel jerked around from one time or topic to another. At the same time, some of the paragraph-level organization seemed awkward. Half a paragraph may discuss one story, then we get a sentence with extra details about a minor character, then the rest of the paragraph suddenly moves in a different direction. In my mind, that should be two paragraphs, and maybe even put the extra-detail sentence in parenthesis or a footnote.
I received a copy of this book for free from the GoodReads FirstReads program. Thank you!
I was impressed by the overall organization of the book. Each chapter takes us further in Carver's life, yet is still topical enough. There is obviously considerable overlap, but you don't feel jerked around from one time or topic to another. At the same time, some of the paragraph-level organization seemed awkward. Half a paragraph may discuss one story, then we get a sentence with extra details about a minor character, then the rest of the paragraph suddenly moves in a different direction. In my mind, that should be two paragraphs, and maybe even put the extra-detail sentence in parenthesis or a footnote.
I received a copy of this book for free from the GoodReads FirstReads program. Thank you!
April 8, 2016
I enjoyed this book and learned a lot about this man. The book made me wish I could have met him.
April 11, 2016
He was quite a man smart tolerant the book was telling about his incredible ability to be nice to all that what I found to be the thing I found that most interesting because he was tested
October 21, 2016
I do not think this was the right book but I couldn't find it. I mean it was not bad after all, it was a good book but I do not think I will read this again.
November 7, 2016
Very well written--fascinating story of an inspiring person!
March 25, 2017
What an influence for good
Reading this book, and learning how he lived and loved people, will change anyone who reads it. It has changed me.
Reading this book, and learning how he lived and loved people, will change anyone who reads it. It has changed me.
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