A new painting will be hung in the dining room of the Missouri Governor’s Mansion tomorrow. [Wednesday]
The portrait of George Washington Carver was created by Missouri artist Joanna Reid.
Carver began his life as a slave in Diamond, Missouri in the early 1860’s. When he was a week old, Carver, along with his sister and mother were kidnapped by night raiders and sold in Kentucky. His previous owner, Moses Carver, found him and negotiated his return. After slavery was abolished in Missouri in 1865, Moses Carver raised George Carver and his brother as his own children.
He grew up to promote alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes. He also developed ways to combat soil depletion while a professor at the Tuskegee Institute.
Carver died in 1943.