George Washington Carver, born in slavery and orphaned in infancy, rose to national and international fame as an agricultural scientist. Carver grew up and was educated in the northern states and later became a faculty member at the all-black Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, working in the forefront of the infant discipline of "scientific agricul-:mb ture." Carver devised and promoted scores of uses for peanuts and sweet potatoes, and he had a significant effect on the diversification of southern agricultural practices. His testimony in 1921 before the House Ways and Means Committee achieved a tariff to protect the U.S. peanut industry and was the beginning of his identity as the peanut wizard. He also worked with hybrid cotton, conducted experiments in crop rotation and restoration of soil fertility, and developed useful products from Alabama red clay. Carver was a widely talented man who became an almost mythical American...