George Washington Carver's Dialogue with Gandhi

This is one of a series of readings and activities I wrote for my students on the dialogues that were occurring between Indians and African Americans in the generation before King.   

Today, most people only know George Washington Carver as the African American scientist who discovered over 100 uses for the peanut.  However, if there was no more to the story than that, Carver would not be so historically significant.  In addition to being a world-renowned scientist, many people considered Carver the closest thing to a saint America had.  In fact, civil rights scholar Nico Slate writes that Gandhi himself “came to see Carver as many Blacks saw Gandhi – as a man of profound personal and spiritual virtue.” 

George Washington Carver was a professor at Tuskegee University, where he conducted research and taught science classes.  He also led a weekly Bible class for thirty years.  For Carver, religious study and practice was essential for inner strength, dignity, and self-sufficiency.  Carver credited his strong religious faith for providing him with the insight he needed to be a good scientist, and considered science to be one way to become more intimate with God’s creation.  In fact, Carver said he prayed to “…the Great Creator silently daily, and often many times per day, to permit me to speak to him through the three great Kingdoms of the world, which he has created… the Animal, Mineral and Vegetable kingdoms; their relations to each other, our relations to them and the Great God who made all of us.” 

 

George Washington Carver

Science for Carver was a spiritual and ethical practice.  As a spiritual practice, science meant getting to know how God’s creation worked and thus was a way of becoming closer and more connected to God’s creation.  As an ethical practice, science was a way of helping others.  George Washington Carver’s scientific career was dedicated to helping all people, but especially African American farmers in the South. This is where the fabled peanut comes in. 

Different plants take different nutrients from the soil, and different plants put different nutrients back in.  Across the South, cotton had sucked many nutrients out of the soil, so Carver focused on discovering which plants would restore the nutrients necessary to grow plentiful, healthy food.  He discovered that sweet potatoes, soy beans, and peanuts restored the nutrients that cotton had taken from the soil.  Carver also helped farmers develop better diets and discover how to make products they could use and sell with the plants they grew. 

On the surface, the fact that Carver discovered so many uses for the peanut may not seem very important, but consider some of these uses: peanut oil can be used to produce gasoline as well as massage oil, cosmetics, and even plastic.  Peanut shells can be used for everything from insulation to patching roads.  By being able to make these products for themselves, farmers wouldn't have to spend the little money they had, and in addition could make something to sell.  By teaching poor farmers how to create these products and many more, Carver made a massive contribution to the lives of farmers all across the South.  At Tuskegee, he trained teachers to educate farm communities in gaining self-sufficiency.  He created a moving classroom that toured the South, and taught in farming communities himself.  Carver was so devoted to his work that he turned down a job from Thomas Edison – inventor of the light bulb, camera, and phonograph – that would have made him a millionaire.

Charles Freer Andrews

In 1929, Gandhi’s closest friend, Charles Freer Andrews, moved to Tuskegee to lecture on Gandhi’s philosophy of satyagraha, which is the revolutionary political power that arises through combining love with speaking the truth about injustice.   Like Carver, Charles Andrews was a devoted Christian.  The two men spent many long hours discussing ways to use Christianity to communicate satyagraha to the American public.  Ultimately, it would be this combination of Christian faith with Gandhi’s vision of satyagraha that would become such a powerful force in the South.  As George D. Kelsey, one of Martin Luther King’s professors, later said of the Civil Rights movement: “Christ furnished the spirit and motivation, while Gandhi furnished the method.” 

When Charles Andrews returned to India, George Washington Carver sent him with a diet for Gandhi that he hoped would improve Gandhi’s health, which was of course necessary for Gandhi's revolutionary activity.  For religious reasons, Gandhi tried not to drink milk unless he absolutely needed to for strength.  Part of the recipe Carver sent included instructions for making soymilk which he hoped could be used instead.  Carver also sent Gandhi many ideas for helping Indian farmers create healthy soil and healthy diets.   

Gandhi and Carver would remain in touch for the remainder of Gandhi’s life.  Their visions were too similar for them not to communicate with one another.  In fact, much of their vision shared a common origin: the philosophy of Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee University.  Part of Washington's idea was to create small schools for African American children all over the South, which would be staffed by teachers trained at Tuskegee to help African Americans learn higher order skills that were often kept from them.   While Carver worked to educate African American farmers in the South, Gandhi applied this idea to the untouchables of India.

Booker T. Washington

Untouchables - who Gandhi called harijan, meaning "children of God" - were only allowed to do the lowest paying, dirtiest, least safe, and least skilled types of work.  Other members of society were not supposed to interact with them.  Gandhi established special communities across India where untouchables could break this pattern by working for themselves and gaining skills that were normally kept from them.  For both Carver and Gandhi, the fight for civil and human rights meant breaking down the barriers of segregation and helping the poorest people in society maximize the few resources they had while gaining alternative skills that could help move them forward. 

Not only did both men teach the oppressed peoples of their nations how to make the most of the little they had, they also taught that physical work was not lowly, but dignified.  Both men combined spirituality and religious practice with their work, teaching, for example, that farming led to a spiritual connection with the land that many people with more “dignified” work were missing.  They taught that producing ones food or clothing led to a far deeper appreciation for these things than people who depend on factories can ever experience.  

Finally, Gandhi linked self-sufficiency to overthrowing empire: if the Indian people did not rely on their British rulers for any goods or service, and also did not provide them with any, they would undermine all British power.  Accomplishing this goal would require all Indians to make great sacrifices and to work together despite their differences.  African Americans increasingly wondered what a "black Gandhi" would look like - what vision and what type of leadership could unite African Americans in doing everything they had to do to end oppression in all its forms?