Posted by Meredith on Tuesday, Feb 9, 2016
The Iowa City Public Library invites students in kindergarten through third grades to celebrate botanist and inventor George Washington Carver during a special Black History Month event from 4 to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 16, in the Storytime Room.
George Washington Carver was born into slavery in the 1860s. After slavery was abolished, he attended several schools before earning his high school diploma in Minneapolis, Kansas. He studied botany at Iowa State Agriculture College in Ames. He was the college’s first black student and, eventually, its first black faculty member before serving as Director of Agriculture at the upstart Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
Carver is famous for his agricultural discoveries and inventions. He introduced the idea of crop rotation in the rural South, in which farmers would rotate cotton, which depleted the soil of nutrients, with peanuts, which replenished them, from year to year. Carver devised more than 300 uses for peanuts, including dyes, paints, plastics and gasoline.
Using books, music, artifacts and toys, the Library will celebrate the life and accomplishments of George Washington Carver in an engaging program designed to make history fun.
For more information, call the Library at 319-356-5200.