The former director of the Iowa State University Seed Science Center and current director of the USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Manjit Misra, delivered the 2024 George Washington Carver Convocation address at Tuskegee University in early February.
In 1894, attending Iowa State University, Carver became the first African American to earn a Bachelor of Science degree. Impressed by Carver’s research on the fungal infections of soybean plants, his professors asked him to stay on for graduate studies.
Carver worked with famed mycologist (fungal scientist) L.H. Pammel at the Iowa State Experimental Station, honing his skills in identifying and treating plant diseases.
Photo courtesy of Tuskegee University
In 1896, Carver earned his Master of Agriculture degree and immediately received several offers, the most attractive of which came from Booker T. Washington (whose last name George would later add to his own) of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
Washington convinced the university’s trustees to establish an agricultural school, which could only be run by Carver if Tuskegee was to keep its all-Black faculty. Carver accepted the offer and would work at Tuskegee Institute for the rest of his life.
Using the power of R.L. Sharpe’s poem “A Bag of Tools” to illustrate a number of inspirational lessons, Misra carried the audience through an address that wrapped the legacy of Dr. Carver around the power of life revealed from a seedling to plant, to the value of food as medicine and brought the students back to a list of tools he recommends they carry through life.
Watch here: