Dr George Washington Carver who spent almost 50 years at Tuskegee Institute and often times simply defined as the “Peanut Wizard” revolutionized farming as we know it and ushered in the food and environmental Justice movement.
Carver developed farming methods that increased crop yields, safeguarded ecological health, and revitalized soil ravaged by the overproduction of cotton, the linchpin of the South’s economy. No less importantly, Carver devoted much of his life to teaching formerly enslaved people how to use those techniques to achieve a measure of independence, justice and sustainability.
This submission situates Dr. Carver's work and influence within the Appalachian region with a particular focus on West Virginia and Kentucky, Using the scholarly essay format along with photo based descriptive posters and community presentation, this submission will provide a glimpse of Dr Carver efforts to inspire the food justice movement in these particular states and region. The essay would be quite suitable for journal submission and the accompanying posters would be suitable for museum exhibition and presentation. Each format complimenting the other will provide a narrow lens into Dr Carver's national outreach and influence.
Using archival photographs, newspaper clippings and other documents along with narrative descriptions, my essay and posters will highlight in West Virginia Dr Carver's 1)speaking engagements at the HBCU, West Virginia, State College, 2) his inspiration for the “ Colored 4-H Camp”, 3) his mentorship with Austin Curtis; and in Kentucky 1) his speaking engagements to Black farmers and teachers at the “Colored Chautauqua” events, 2) his mentorship with Henry Allen Laine and my grandfather DB Ballew, and 3) his connections with the HBCU Kentucky State University.
Carver’s bigger mission of helping Black farmers throughout the South grow enough food to sustain their families and free themselves from the oppression of sharecropping. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the Southeast needed a healer — someone to give back at least a little of what slavery had taken from the land and the people. Black scientist George Washington Carver stepped into that role and in the process, revolutionized farming as we know it, taught people how to grow their own food and fight for a more equitable agricultural system and inspired future generations to occupy positions within the national food justice movement more than a century ago. Teaching Black farmers how to tap the land’s abundance, as Carver did, upsets the racial and economic hierarchy on which America was built. Recognizing that as we tell the whole story of Carver’s life is essential to celebrating his past — and safeguarding our future.
Jim Embry, director of Sustainable Communities Network, caretaker of a 30 acre family farm, state governor of Slow Food USA for KY chapters, member of Black Urban Growers, Black Soil, Good Foods Cooperative and other food justice organizations, regards himself as an agrarian intellectual activist following in the footsteps of his enslaved ancestors who were brought to Kentucky around 1800. By walking in the footsteps of these ancestors, his work today is a continuation and expansion of these ancestors efforts to build community, organize for social justice and help inspire future generations.
The 30 acre family farm which is bathed by the Kentucky River watershed, nourished by the soil highly mineralized by limestone and sits at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Madison County Kentucky was purchased by his family in 1889 on land habited historically by the Cherokee peoples. This family farm serves as a community resource center for the theory and practice of sustainable living, regenerative agriculture, food and environmental justice.
Jim has been involved in all of the social movements of the past 60 years ever since his early t involvement in the Civil Rights movement as a 10 year old member of the Congress of Racially. With a focus on food and environmental justice and advocating at the local national International levels Jim has contributed articles and essays in such publications as on Kentucky African-American Encyclopedia, Sustainable World Sourcebook Latino journal and has an essay in the forthcoming book We Are Each Other's Harvest.
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