[MUSIC]
Hi everyone, it's me, teacher
Vivian, back again with another storytime
from The Lawrence at Home.
I'm so happy to see your face and
to read today's really awesome story.
So this week we're going to be
focusing on different Black scientists —
that oftentimes, we see in
history, have their stories erased —
in light of recent events that our nation
and our world are having conversations about.
In the description, we're going to
be putting different resources like
books about Black scientists, and
also we're going to be putting resources on
different books you can learn about —
for different age groups — on being anti-racist
and about racism, and also other
resources for kids and parents and teachers, too.
Before you get started don't forget to
like and subscribe to Lawrence at Home
so you can get more updates on
when we go live, have more storytimes,
and have other
opportunities to learn more about science.
So let's get started with today's
story on George Washington Carver.
So, today's story is about
George Washington Carver
who is an awesome inventor and scientist.
So, George Washington Carver was
an African American agricultural scientist
and inventor, who made many
hundreds of products using peanuts.
He was also a teacher and a researcher.
So it looks like George Washington
Carver was a man of many different hats.
He wore a hat of being an
inventor and the hat of being a scientist,
as well as a teacher and a researcher.
So you don't have to just be one thing.
You can try lots of different things,
and contribute to science in different ways.
He was born in 1864,
a year before slavery was banned.
George grew up learning how to do
things like cook, embroider, and make medicine —
just another example of how George knew
how to do a lot of things from a very young age.
He also loved to experiment with plants.
Farmers around him call him the "plant doctor"
because he knew how to help
out with soil and pests in their crops.
So if different farmers had different pests or bugs
that were like messing up
their crops and things like that,
because George knew how to study those
things — he loved to study plants and soil —
he could help them out and help treat their crops.
When George was only 11 years old,
he started going to an all-Black school.
A couple took care of him, and the woman,
Mariah Watkins — here's a picture of her right here —
taught him a lot about plants that could be medicines.
Wow! When George was only 11
years old, he left home to go to school.
That's so crazy — when I was
18, I left home to go to school.
And man, 11 years old is really young.
But looks like George really wanted to get an education.
Okay.
George moved from school to school in the Midwest.
He applied to a college called Highland College,
and they accepted him into the all-white college,
but when they found out he
was Black, they didn't let him in.
Hmm.
I'm not sure how that makes you feel, but
I think for me, that that seems kind of wrong.
Just because of the color of his
skin and the way that he was born,
hmm ... he wasn't allowed to go and
get the education that other people could get.
And, clearly, he was qualified
because they let him in in the first place.
Hmm.
Even though that college discouraged him from
a higher education, George got accepted into a school
that let all people who are qualified
in, and it was called Simpson College.
So, I'm glad that George was able to
apply to a different school that accepted him.
And there, George first started studying arts and piano.
And there's a picture of him in his art class right here.
But his professor thought it would be too
hard for a Black man to be successful as an artist.
His professor found out that George liked plants
so she suggested that he
study botany, the study of plants.
Hmm, that's really sad.
They had a really good relationship, and
George Washington Carver actually talked a lot
about how he was encouraged by
his professor, but she was really worried
that he might not be able to make it out there,
and that shows a lot about what kind of society,
or what kind of world that he was living in, that
she was worried that it might be too hard
for a Black man to be successful as an artist.
George went to Iowa State
University, and in 1894, he became
the very first African American to
get a Bachelor of Science degree.
He spent time researching how to treat sick plants.
Wow! It seems that George knows how to do
a lot of things, and he's really, really smart too.
And he was the very first African
American to get a Bachelor of Science degree.
George convinced a school called
Tuskegee University to keep their all-Black teachers,
and opened a school — a
whole school — about agriculture.
And he worked there for the rest of his life.
He made a lot of very cool and important discoveries:
He learned that green plants, like
cotton, were taking nutrients from the soil.
But he had a solution, because George knows
a lot and he's been studying plants for a long time.
Remember when he was
the plant doctor for the farmers?
He shared with farmers that
planting crops like peanuts and soybeans
could bring nutrients back into the soil.
And he also invented this very
cool thing — I put a picture here —
called the Jessup wagon, which was
a horse-drawn vehicle that he could use
as a teaching station on wheels.
So imagine if your classroom
where you go to school was on wheels.
He could go around and share his knowledge
with lots of people about agriculture and farming.
George was very good at finding solutions to problems.
Farmers were using his technique of
growing peanuts to get nutrients into soil,
but then they had too many peanuts!
But George saw this as an opportunity to invent,
and he made over 300 inventions using peanuts.
And George got a new nickname: The Peanut Man.
Wow! It looks like George sees a problem
and he knows how to fix because he is curious
and he has a lot of experience because he was curious.
And as he got older, George was all about helping
people and sharing the things that he discovered.
He taught people about nutrition
and shared his research with people.
He helped people, from
farmers to teachers to housewives.
As a scientist, he knew that
it was important to share knowledge,
and he did this for his whole life.
Alright, I'm gonna stop sharing my
screen because that's the end of our story.
I don't know about you, but I'm
really inspired by George's story.
I saw those two examples: In the
first example where he got into that college
and then they rejected him after he
got in because of the color of his skin,
and the second time, when his professor
told him that he might not make it as an artist
because he was a Black man.
I think those kinds of things make me feel
kind of upset because it seems very unfair
that by the color of someone's skin,
they're not given a lot of opportunities.
So I encourage you to ask questions
and learn more about these kinds of things
that are still happening in our world today,
and study more scientists like
George who are really resilient
and, despite these kinds of things, were
able to be awesome, awesome scientists.
And they even end up sharing lots of their findings
with their friends, and other
scientists and farmers everywhere.
Alright everyone, thank you so
much for joining us today for storytime.
We're gonna put the
resource list in the description below,
and I hope you can lots more about what's going
on in our current world and what we can do about it.
But we can learn about awesome Black
scientists and learn their stories too.
Don't forget to like and subscribe to
The Lawrence at Home so you can get more updates
on storytimes and science times.
And I'll see you next time.
Bye!
