Episode Details

George Washington Carver did not invent peanut butter. This episode peels back the myth to reveal the real man: born into slavery during the Civil War, kidnapped as an infant, turned away from schools because of his race, and still determined to become one of America's most influential agricultural scientists.

We follow Carver from the Kansas prairie and art classes at Simpson College to Iowa State and his tense years under Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee. We explain how he fought soil exhaustion from cotton with nitrogen-fixing crops, reached farmers through bulletins and a mobile classroom, and captivated a skeptical congressional committee in 1921.

• Who actually developed peanut paste and why the peanut butter credit is a myth
• Mariah Watkins, the origin of Carver's name, and his long, transient search for education
• How an art teacher saw his botanical talent and steered him toward science
• Crop rotation, rhizobia, and why sharecroppers needed a market before they could switch crops
• His 1921 testimony, his philosophy of self-sufficiency, and the first national monument to an African American