Dr. George W. Carver in laboratory
at Tuskegee University

Booker T. Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute in 1881.  Washington’s goal was to educate the masses of these newly freed Africans in America’s legal slave system with practical training essential to meet the immediate needs of the people.  His desire ignited other dedicated staff members, including Dr. George Washington Carver and Thomas Campbell.

George Washington Carver was born the son of a slave.  Raised in Missouri, Carver grew up in an era of change in America. Slavery had just been abolished and newly freed Africans lacked the skills necessary to compete in a free enterprise system. 

Carver was at a further disadvantage because he suffered from the health problem.  At a young age he came down with a severe case of whooping cough.  He was too frail to do the normal work that was expected at his age.  He therefore wandered about discovering the many facets of nature. He also enjoyed painting.  However, when it came to education, he doubted if he could actually make a living as an artist and decided to pursue a career in agriculture and later went on to receive his masters from Iowa State in Agriculture.

In April of 1896, just after completing the requirements for his Masters of Science degree in agriculture, Carver received a letter from Booker T. Washington, which requested Dr. Carver to set up an agricultural department at Tuskegee. In the letter Washington stated: “ I cannot offer you money, position, or fame…I offer you in their place work-hard, hard, work-the task of bringing a people from degradation, poverty and waste to full manhood.” Carver took the offer later saying, “this has been Gods plan for me all along.” From that partnership, The Tuskegee developed its current reputation as one of America’s leading educational organizations.

Upon becoming the Director of Tuskegee’s agriculture program, Dr George Washington Carver planned and demonstrated the benefits of utilizing a method called “crop rotation to build the soil at Tuskegee, Alabama, which during that time, had lost a lot of its nitrogen due to so many years of growing cotton.

He became known as the “Peanut Man, “ because he created over 385 products from the peanut. However, initially the peanuts were planted because peanuts roots create a nitrogen fixing bacteria that fertilizes the soil.   It just so happens that in the process of using peanuts to fertilize the soil throughout Tuskegee, they had a surplus of peanuts, which they had no idea what to do with. Dr. Carver went back to the drawing board.  He stayed in his laboratory for over a week uninterrupted and developed what he called “waste products from the peanut.”

From the peanut, he created over 385 products.  It is said that from the products Carver developed the South grossed over $200,000,000 annually.

While living in Georgia, Thomas Monroe Campbell, at the age of sixteen, ran away from home to attend The Tuskegee Normal School in 1899. Upon arriving, he worked and volunteered at Tuskegee to pay his expenses. He soon studied under Dr. Carver and learned to present the teachings of agriculture to others and became the official driver of the Jessup wagon, later termed the “moveable school.”

After graduating from Tuskegee, Booker T. Washington said to Thomas Campbell, “I want you to begin a new and rather peculiar type of work…the reason I am anxious for you to begin the work is that the farmers who need instructions most, I fear are not getting it.  We must take, in a larger measure, the information to them…use actual demonstrations rather than speech making only…instead of telling the farmer what to do, show him how to do, and he will never forget it.” This was the In April of 1896, just after completing the requirements for his Masters of Science degree in agriculture, Carver received a letter from Booker T. Washington, which requested Dr. Carver to set up an agricultural department at Tuskegee. In the letter Washington stated: “ I cannot offer you money, position, or fame…I offer you in their place work-hard, hard, work-the task of bringing a people from degradation, poverty and waste to full manhood.” Carver took the offer later saying, “this has been Gods plan for me all along.” From that partnership, The Tuskegee developed its current reputation as one of America’s leading educational organizations.

Upon becoming the Director of Tuskegee’s agriculture program, Dr George Washington Carver planned and demonstrated the benefits of utilizing a method called “crop rotation to build the soil at Tuskegee, Alabama, which during that time, had lost a lot of its nitrogen due to so many years of growing cotton.

He became known as the “Peanut Man, “ because he created over 385 products from the peanut. However, initially the peanuts were planted because peanuts roots create a nitrogen fixing bacteria that fertilizes the soil.   It just so happens that in the process of using peanuts to fertilize the soil throughout Tuskegee, they had a surplus of peanuts, which they had no idea what to do with. Dr. Carver went back to the drawing board.  He stayed in his laboratory for over a week uninterrupted and developed what he called “waste products from the peanut.”

From the peanut, he created over 385 products.  It is said that from the products Carver developed the South grossed over $200,000,000 annually.

While living in Georgia, Thomas Monroe Campbell, at the age of sixteen, ran away from home to attend The Tuskegee Normal School in 1899. Upon arriving, he worked and volunteered at Tuskegee to pay his tuition.

Thomas Campbell’s travels throughout the South are well documented in the autobiography called, The Moveable School Goes To The Negro Farmer.  By the time the idea of a traveling school became a reality, he had built the kind of trust in Booker T. Washington that would make him the first paid demonstrator of Tuskegee.
A man named Jessup financed the wagon, which was drawn by Dr. Carver, for Thomas Campbell to travel throughout the South.  He wrote, “ in many places after a hard days work, I went to bed only to be disturbed in the night by countless bedbugs.  Occasionally, they were so numerous that by morning the pillows were smeared with blood…it is true that with much effort and inconvenience, I could have found better homes and there in some communities, but my aim was to reach “the man farthest down.”

As Thomas Campbell explains, the movable school demonstrated to the world a strategy of reaching “ the man farthest down.”

In 1929, in Madras, India, Agricultural Department put on a traveling motor exhibition as a means of instructions for the peasants.  This outfit resembles our own movable school truck, and in construction and equipment is designed to meet similar needs…to Sangli (also in India) have gone our plans and set.” The movable school was also duplicated in China, Rhodesia, and several other places.

In India, Mohandas Karachand Gandhi, a religious leader, in the peaceful Indian Independence Movement, created a self-sufficient agenda. Agenda very similar to Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee.  IN fact, an advisor to Gandhi was responsible for duplicating the movable school and bringing it to India.  Like his American counterpart, Gandhi led his people to produce their own salt, spin their own cotton, and build their government. He succeeded without using violence.

Gandhi described his construction program, “by breaking it down into seventeen aspects of how he felt his people could achieve self sufficiency.  IN number 12, called economic equality, is what Gandhi termed the “master key to non-violence independence.” Gandhi stated, “ Gandhi stated, “it had to be build brick by brick by corporate self help.”

Booker T. Washington wrote, “In the early days of the school, I think my most trying experience was in the matter of brick making. As soon as we got the farm work reasonably well started, we directed our efforts toward the industry of making bricks…there was no brick yard in the town, and in addition to our own needs there was a demand for bricks in the general market.”

Almost twenty years after founding Tuskegee, Washington evaluated the success of Tuskegee by saying, during the nineteen years existence of the Tuskegee school, the plan of having the buildings erected by students labor has been adhered to.  In this time forty buildings, counting small and large, have been built, and all except four are almost wholly the product of student labor.  As a result, hundreds of men are now scattered throughout the South who received their knowledge of mechanics while being taught how to erect these buildings.  Skill and knowledge are now handed down from one set of students to another in this way.”

After Gandhi proved triumphant in South Africa, he returned to India, and traveled extensively throughout India meeting with poor farmers to learn of their conditions.  Understanding the unfair trading practices between the poor farmers and the British government, Gandhi led a boycott. 

His boycott was different than the boycott’s African Americans used in the early 60’s.  In India, not only did the peasants refuse to trade their raw cotton to the British.  As the result of his leadership, Gandhi was arrested several times for his civil disobedience. To push his beliefs in jail, Gandhi would fast until certain demands were met.

After fasting for a certain period of time, Gandhi often became very weak.  To help nourish Gandhi, one of his supporter’s in 1929,came to Tuskegee to receive a vegetarian diet from Dr. Carver.  In 1935, Gandhi sent another supporter to receive bulletins written for the poor farmer.  Carver received a note of appreciation from Gandhi, and replied by saying that he was praying for Gandhi’s success, “in this marvelous work you are doing.”

There were other correspondences between the Indian Independence Movement and the struggle for freedom in the United States.  In fact, when Gandhi supporters traveled to visit the “American Negro,” they were warmly welcomed by W.E.B Dubois’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P). The African American spiritual leader, Author, Howard Thurman was the first African American to visit Gandhi.

After abhering a speech about Gandhi, given by Mordeci Johnson, at Howard University, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went to buy every book he could find on Gandhi.

One of Gandhi’s supporters spoke at a Universal Negro Improvement Association (U.N.I.A) meeting. 


Led by Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the U.N.I.A developed a self sufficient agenda from the foundation of Booker T. Washington Tuskegee Model.  In fact, it was after reading about Booker T. Washington was the moment Marcus Garvey saw himself as a leader.  “ I read Up From Slavery, by Booker T. Washington…and then my doom-if I may so call it –of being a race leader dawned upon me…I asked: where is the Black man’s government? Where is his king and kingdom? Where is his president, his country, and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of high affairs?” I could not find them, and then I declared, I will help make them.”

In Garvey’s words, the major difference between Booker T. Washington and himself was related to the new needs of the Negro. Garvey said, “ the world satisfied itself to believe that succeeding Negro leaders would follow absolutely the teachings of Washington. Unfortunately, the world is having a rude awakening in that we are evolving a new ideal.  The new ideal includes the program of Booker T. Washington and gone much further..if Washington had lived he would have had to change his program.  No leader can successfully lead this race of ours without giving an interpretation of the wakened spirit of the new Negro, who does not seek industrial opportunity alone, but a political voice.  The world is amazed of the new Negro, for his strong voice, he is demanding a place in the affairs of men.”

When did Garvey begin his quest? Garvey took pride in his Akan roots and his Maroon heritage of the Maroons were escaped slaves that developed self sufficient societies.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, was born in 1887 in rural Jamaica.  Garvey’s organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was formed in Jamaica in 1914.  By the early 1920’s, branches existed all over the Caribbean, the United States, Africa, etc.  Garveys organization created 1,120 branches in over 40 countries to become the largest Pan African movement in modern history, the slogan for the Universal Negro Association was “one God, One Aim, One Destiny…”Africa or the Africans.”

Garvey also promoted the concept of a new unified African by creating a flag with the colors, Red, Black, and Green, representing, the blood, the people and the land, respectively.

Garvey’s publication, the Negro World, was the voice of the organization.  Issues of the Negro World, could be found throughout Africa in various languages.  Carter G. Woodson, “The Father of Black History Month,” wrote a weekly column in The Negro World.  In fact, the very first pages of Woodson’s monumental book, The Miseducation of the Negro, first appeared in the Negor History Week! He Fails to Learn His Past Altogether.

During the later years  of the U.N.IA., the self –sufficient agenda took a more a more religious turn.  Elijah Poole, a corporal of a U.N.I.A. Chicago divisioj, became attracted to Prophet Wallace ardand the Nation of Islm.  Fard Mysteriously disappeared, and Elijah replaced Fard as he leader of the movement in 1934 and, under the name Elijah Muhammad, had some ten thousand Black Muslim followers by 1940.

As a child, Malcolm Little, could recall his father preaching the Garvey words of “One God, One Aim, One Destiny.’ After his father was murdered because of his preaching of Marcus Garvey’s U.N.I.A., and his mother admitted to a mental institution, Malcolm Little found himself in prison learning about Elijah Muhammad.  Like his father, Earl Little, who use to preach about Garvey, Malcolm Little, changed his name to Malcolm X and began to preach the teachings of Elijah Muhammad.

Due to some differences with Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam, and started The Muslim Mosque, Inc, which kept the religious faith of the Nation of Islam, but added a political, social, and economical philosophy of Black Nationalism.

Like Marcus Garvey’s “Back to Africa” movement, Malcom’s long-range program was to migrate to Africa, but first constructing a short-range program of controlling or communities. 

During the last years of El Hadj Malik El Shabazz’s life, he formed the Organization of Afro-American Unity "to unite everyone in the Western Hemisphere of African descent into one united force.  And then, once we are united among ourselves in the Western Hemisphere, we will united our brothers on the motherland, on the continent of Africa."

The Organization of Afro-American Unity was Malcolm’s version of the Organization of African Unity established by various leaders of independent African countries including Kwame Nkrume, Ben Bella, Sekou Toure, Jomo Kenyatta.

El Hadj Malik El Shabazz was assassinated on February 21, 1965.  His plans of a united African race remains to be seen.

Following he assassination of El Hadj Malik El Shabazz, The Black Panther Party organized themselves to fulfill many of the concepts Malcolm X had left unfinished. Along with their agenda for self-sufficiency, the nation witnessed for the first time Black men and women carrying rifles.

Founded by Huey P.Newton and Bobby Seale, Black Panther Chapters were found popping up throughout the country.  J. Edger Hoover, head of the F.B.I., declared them the Number 1 enemy of U.S. security.  Soon after, several divisions were bombed and many leaders were either killed by police officers or framed and thrown in jail.

The Survival programs of the Panther party dealt with taking care of the basic needs of the community. i.e. food, clothing and shelter. For example, the Black Panther Party realized children were going to school hungry and started a breakfast program to feed them and teach them.

Now, some 40 years later, throughout the United States, various organizations are continuing the pursuit of developing self sufficiency in their communities.

Here in Oakland, Ca, Mo' Better Food started a farmers market at a high school from produce grown by African American farmers. Today, Mo' Better Food is one of the four programs of the Healthy Economics Model For Community Development.