read from until he was almost eighty years old! During his time at Lincoln School, he studied until he was ready for high school. At about age sixteen, he hitchhiked to Fort Scott, Kansas in search of a high school education. One day while at the drugstore in Fort Scott, he witnessed a brutality occur when a white mob pulled a black man out of prison to kill him with beatings and fire. Horrified, Carver left that town immediately. He became a wanderer for almost ten years, working and learning when he could.
             In the meantime, he longed for a garden; so he painted pictures of flowers to help satisfy that desire. Finally, at around age twenty-five, he finished his high school education, yet wanted more. He was admitted to Simpson College in Iowa where he studied music and art. It was his love of painting plants that furthered his education at Iowa State Agricultural College where he earned a master's degree. One of his teachers said about him that he only had, "a satchel full of poverty and a burning zeal to know everything"6. In 1896, he became the first African American to graduate with a Master's degree from Iowa State Agricultural College. He was also the first African American to ever attend Iowa State. He studied botany, agriculture, chemistry, bacteriology, zoology, and entomology. During his stay there, he strongly experienced the Jim Crow System. Teachers, who felt sorry for his poverty, sometimes offered him gifts of clothes and money. Believing in working for everything he received, he would not accept charity. He kept busy and happy with his studies and paintings. Some of his plant paintings made their way to the World's Fair in Chicago after receiving top prize places in the state exhibit of artists. During his last two years when he was studying for his Master's, he was made assistant instructor in Botany and was in charge of the greenhouse.7
             Shortly after Carver earn...