Carver:

A Life In Poems

About This Book

George Washington Carver (1864–1943) earned the respect of both blacks and whites in the rural South by freeing the Southern economy from the environmental ravages of cotton with his innovative agricultural methods, and went on to win the respect of the nation and the world as one of the great inventors of the early Twentieth Century. In a mixture of free-verse and rhymed, metrical verse, Nelson traces the life of this brilliant humanitarian, artist and scientist, beginning with his birth in Diamond Grove, Missouri and ending with his death in Tuskegee, Alabama.

Born a slave, Carver and his brother, Jim, were reared by the childless white couple who had owned their mother. With the encouragement of his adoptive parents, Carver left home at age ten in order to find schools which would accept a black student. He spent much of his youth traveling from town to town in pursuit of an education.

In this celebration of Carver's life, Nelson focuses on his character, his work, his faith, his inventions, his commitment to the economic development of his people and of the American South, and his contributions to the development of sustainable agriculture.