George Washington Carver

George Washington Carver was born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, near the end of the Civil War. As a baby he and his mother were kidnapped by raiders; he was found and returned, but his mother was never seen again. Raised by Moses and Susan Carver, his former owners, he was a sickly child who loved plants and was called the plant doctor. He traveled to find schools that would admit Black students, finished high school in Kansas, and after being turned away from one college because of his race, studied art and then botany at Iowa State, where he became the first Black student and later the first Black faculty member. In 1896 Booker T. Washington invited him to Tuskegee Institute, where he taught for forty-seven years. Seeing that cotton had exhausted Southern soil, he taught farmers to rotate crops with peanuts, sweet potatoes and soybeans, which restore nitrogen, and developed hundreds of uses for them. He took a wagon school to farmers. He was a devout Christian who spoke of finding God in nature. He died in 1943.

Faith: Became a Christian as a boy and spoke of his faith in God throughout his life. Source: Wikipedia