George Washington Carver was a great man, he was so smart. He invented so many things we use today such as the beloved peanut butter. But that’s not all he did, he also taught farmers. This is a biography of George Washington Carver’s life.

George was born a slave in 1864 near Diamond Grove, Missouri. He lived on Moses and Susan Carver’s farm with his mother. When George was still an infant, he and his mother were kidnapped by night raiders. Moses Carver hired a man to find them. It turns out, they found George but they never found his mother.

Susan wanted George to go to school, so when he turned 12 he walked 8 miles to an all black school. When George was ready to go to college, he applied to Highland College, but he was turned down because he was black. Five years later, he attended Simpson College where he was the only black student.  One year later, George went to Iowa State University. After he graduated, he became a teacher at Iowa State University.

George still wanted to teach students about farming, and one day Booker T. Washington sent George a letter asking him to work at Tuskegee Institute to teach the black students about farming. He also wanted to teach the farmers. The farmers couldn’t go to school so he had to bring school to them in a giant wagon. He taught the students and farmers how to grow better crops and make more money. He told them to grow soy beans and peas to make the soil richer for the cotton.

Then one day the farmers told George that a bug called the boll weevil was eating their cotton. So George told them to grow peanuts. But the peanuts wouldn’t sell. So George went to Congress to ask them to raise the price of other countries peanuts so more people would buy America’s peanuts. But the people still didn’t want to buy the peanuts because they couldn’t think of many ways to use them. So one day, George invited some people over to dinner and made all of his foods out of peanuts and they were delicious! He found three hundred uses for peanuts. Now the farmers were successful with their peanut crops.

He found hundreds of uses for soy beans, pecans and sweet potatoes. He also improved adhesives, axle grease, bleach, buttermilk, chili sauce, fuel briquettes, ink, instant coffee, linoleum, mayonnaise, meat tenderizer, metal polish, paper, plastic, pavement, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, talcum powder, and wood stain. Only 3 patents were ever issued to George.

George Washington Carver is very important to our country. That is why on January 5th George Washington Carver Day is celebrated.

Could you imagine standing on top of the world? Matthew Henson did just that. Matthew Henson is remembered as a well-bred man, a helper to others and was never rude.

Henson was born to free African American parents in Maryland on August 8, 1880. He left home at the age of eight to be a cabin boy on a merchant ship. He left the sea at eighteen because of the racist way people treated him on the ships.

Later on, Henson was a servant for Robert Peary. Peary let him be part of the Arctic team because of how good he was at his job. Henson and Peary finally made it to the North Pole on April 7, 1909. Henson was responsible for the success of the team because of the skills he had learned from the Inuit Indians. He had treated the Inuit in a good way. When everyone said they were going to run out of food, Henson left and always came back with food. It took decades for people to even realize Henson was on the North Pole expedition because of the racism at that time.

Without Henson no one would have ever made it to the North Pole, not even Robert Peary. I could never imagine being brave enough to climb to the top of the world knowing that I might run out of food or freeze to death. I admire Matthew Henson for being one of the only few brave ones that accepted the challenge of going to the top of the world.