George Washington Carver Finds Fame and Befriends Henry Ford

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Carver gained ever-increasing fame. He was offered jobs by well-known individuals. The inventor Thomas Edison offered him a $100,000 salary to come work in his lab in New Jersey, but he turned it down to stay among his people. He befriended leaders from around the world. In 1937, Carver met business mogul Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan, at a meeting of pioneers in the chemurgy movement, a branch of applied chemistry that was concerned with preparing industrial products from agricultural raw materials. Over the next few years, Ford and Carver visited each other back and forth and remained in close contact. Henry Ford picked Carver's brain at every opportunity he could get. Ford had a big plantation in Ways, Georgia. He actually built a school on the property and called it the George Washington Carver School. Had Carver come over and dedicate it, and whenever they met, they would walk around, and Ford would just keep feeding Carver with questions, one after the other, to try to find out how to use certain crops. The last time Henry Ford visited him, he was in Dorothy Hall, and he was living on the second floor, and it was difficult going up and down those stairs. Henry Ford called Montgomery to get an elevator company to come out, and he put an elevator in Dorothy Hall from the first floor to the second floor for Dr. Carver. Henry Ford thought a lot of Dr. Carver.