14. Tom Huston Peanut Company
Though not born and never living in Columbus, George Washing Carver, the Director of Agricultural Research at Tuskegee Institution), had a direct impact on the life of both black and white community.
Carver had close friends in the black community in Columbus, including J.D. Davis, a teacher at Claflin and J.J. Lewis, editor of the Columbus Advocate and president of the Columbus Negro Business League. He worked to encourage students to apply for higher education at Tuskegee. However, Carver’s greatest impact was economic, contracting with Tom Huston and the fledgling Tom Huston Peanut Company (now Tom’s Foods, Inc.) to develop marketable peanut products.
Beginning in 1924 as Hudson was developing his famous for cellophane-packaged roasted peanuts. Carver often visited Huston's office and home, becoming great friends. Indeed, Huston offered him a job in 1929, Carver declined saying:
“I, with others, am clannish enough to want my people to receive credit for my work. I do not want my work to be swallowed up and lost to the race which I belong. Even though I personally may not receive a dollar of it for myself, that will come to somebody by and by.”
Carver had given a similar response to Thomas Edison a decade earlier. Though many African Americans found Carver and his boss Booker T. Washington too accommodationist, Carver recognized his role and reputation in the black community.
1939 saw Carver's last appearance in Columbus when Lewis and a group of white business leaders asked him to speak at Spencer High School to cool tense race relations and labor unrest at the Tom Huston Peanut Company. Blacks males were threatening to strike in support of female workers there. Refectling later on his trip he said:
“I have never heard a finer lot of addresses… it shows what can be done when representative people of both races get together. There is absolutely no need for misunderstandings and race riots and all sorts of disagreeable things. Columbus has set the pace for other sections.”
George Washington Carver died in 1943, and his impact on the city was recognized in the naming of Carver High School and Carver Heights, this latter a residential neighborhood in east Columbus.
Submission composed by Amanda Rees April 24th 2017.
References and
Winn, Billy. George Washington Carver. Local historian and former editorial page editor of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, no date. Copy in the hands of the author.