III.

Career at Tuskegee Institute

During his tenure at Tuskegee Institute, Carver developed over 300 uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans, and the byproducts of these crops. From peanuts he synthesized axle grease, soap, ink, flour, plastics, a coffee substitute, and more than 200 other useful products. From sweet potatoes he derived 118 products, including molasses, vinegar, and rubber, and from soybeans he extracted an oil with many uses. Partly as a result of Carver's research, peanut cultivation in the Southern states quadrupled from 1899 to 1943. By planting peanuts and sweet potatoes in addition to cotton, farmers were able to enrich their soil and were no longer economically dependent upon the success or failure of only one kind of crop.

Uninterested in business, Carver preferred that others commercialize the results of his experiments. Of his many inventions, Carver patented only three. Carver’s primary goal was to help impoverished blacks. In 1940 he donated his savings to the establishment of the George Washington Carver Foundation at Tuskegee Institute to provide scholarships in the natural sciences.