HE SENT OUT SEEDS

ONE sUMMER I visited Tuskegee, the great Negro school in Ala- bama. I went there for one reason and one alone—to walk in the sainted footsteps of George Washington Carver, that great Negro scientist, lover of flowers and people. I became interested in that great man, first of all, through Henry Ford, who believed in Dr. Carver, helped him financially, and offered him all the money he wanted if he would come to Dearborn and carry on his scientific work in the Ford Laboratories.

Mr. Ford said to me one day, “If you ever get to Tuskegee, be sure and see my friend George Washington Carver, for I look upon him as in the class of Luther Burbank, John Burroughs, and Thomas Edison —one of the truly great men that this nation has produced.”

Then Mr. Ford told me of his offer to Dr. Carver, and he also told me that he had had an elevator built in the dormitory in which Dr. Carver lived so that the old man, who was troubled with a heart affliction, would not have to walk up two flights of stairs.

“He has lifted the world to a higher level through his work, and why shouldn’t I lift him up a little with an elevator?”’ added Mr. Ford, smiling. Unfortunately for me, Dr. Carver had gone on to higher heavy- enly levels before I had a chance to get to Tuskegee, but I did revel in walking around those buildings on the campus, riding up in Mr.

Ford’s elevator, and going through the laboratories. It was o2 he who raised the South to a three-crop status by showing that the sweet potato and the peanut have all the ingredients that a human being needs for complete sustenance. He freed the South from its one-crop existence by adding to cotton those other two crops. However, to me George Washington Carver was a great man, not because of his scientific work, but because he was a great man in his inner self.

As Mr. Ford said one day when we were talking about this man, “He loved people and flowers, and that’s a lot to say of any man.”

Then Mr. Ford added, “Why, do you know that it was said of him that he created a happy atmosphere, even among the white people who lived close to him, just by being a friendly person who loved flowers? He was always sending out envelopes filled with flower seeds. Thousands of these were sent out every year.

This simple thing helped more than any of his scientific work—great as that was—to create a good feeling between white and black people in the South. His gifts were simple and represented beauty, color, perfume, and there is nothing racial in kindness and beauty. ‘These two things rise above color, creed, or race. Perhaps Dr.

Carver helped improve race relations more by kindness and by spreading beauty than in any other way. He sent out seeds, and they were not only the actual seeds of flowers; they were the seeds of tolerance, beauty, affection, kindness, love, and faith, and they are still grow- _ ing all over the Southland.” “He sent out seeds!” What a phrase that is!

All of us can do that—literally and spiritually. We can send out seeds that will make the desert to blossom as the rose. WHKEL Ce