George Washington Carver was born into slavery near the end of the Civil War. As a baby he was stolen along with his mother, and only he was brought back, sick with whooping cough. He was frail as a boy, and a doctor said he wouldn’t live to 21. But he had a deep hunger to learn. He walked eight miles to school, worked as a cook and a laundry man to pay his way, and was turned away from one college because of his color. At one point, he wrote, he lived on “prayer beef suet and corn meal.” In a letter about his early life he summed it up simply: “I trusted to God and pressed on.” He became one of the most respected scientists and teachers in America.
