Corridor Buzz - The Premier Source of Arts & Entertainment News and Information for the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Corridor

Peanut Pioneer's Life and Lab on Display in Cedar Rapids

By Loren Keller

"The fundamental law of the universe," George Washington Carver said, "is we reap what we sow."

But it seems likely Carver sowed a lot more than he ever reaped, as evidenced in an ongoing exhibit called "Iowa Roots, Global Impact: The Life & Legacy of George Washington Carver" at the African American Historical Museum and Cultural Center in Cedar Rapids.

This youth-friendly, hands-on exhibit, running through August, might surprise anyone who associates Carver only with his work with the peanut: he also found industrial uses for soil-enriching crops like sweet potatoes, pecans and soybeans (and actually worked with soybeans a full decade before experimenting with the peanut).

On his journey from slave to scientist, Carver made key stops in Iowa. Born into slavery sometime during the Civil War in Missouri, he settled in Winterset in 1889. The following year he enrolled at Simpson College in Indianola – only the second African-American to do so – and later transferred to Iowa State University to write his senior thesis on plant genetics and earn his degree in agriculture.

After Iowa State he decided to help poor African-Americans in the South, accepting an offer from the Tuskegee Institute. His laboratory there is reproduced for the museum exhibit.

Carver is revealed here as a man of many interests: outside the lab, he enjoyed early morning walks in the woods and liked to relax with crochet and embroidery work – often using recycled materials to craft his pieces. He was less interested in patents or profits from his work, once turning down a $100,000 annual salary from Thomas Edison to work on crops at the inventor's lab in Menlo Park, N.J. The same went for pills, powders and other traditional health remedies; Carver took none of those and claimed to avoid bedsickness for 35 years by relying instead on natural remedies like vegetables, fruits and wild herbs.

"Beyond the peanut there were many facets of Carver that people aren't aware of, including his spirituality, his artistry," said Tom Moore, the museum's executive director. "And people who didn't grow up in Iowa have no realization he was here. It was a transformational time of his life, in Indianola, Winterset and Ames. Getting people to know that story is a key component of the exhibit."The exhibit runs through August; a speaker series continues across Iowa through this spring. More information at www.blackiowa.org

--Loren Keller