Although Carver gave up the formal classroom after 1915, he did not ignore Tuskegee's students. Carver's contacts with students, even in the early years, were never limited to the classroom. He took seriously Tuskegee's goal of educating the total person, and he understood that since many of the first students were just a generation or two removed from slavery, they needed to be taught more than chemistry or agriculture: they needed instruction in how to survive in a competitive as well as hostile world.

Carver emphasized the teacher's responsibility to be concerned with his students both in and out of the classroom. Since he lived in a dormitory, he was accessible to all students, regardless of their field of study. Many students, particularly those who suffered most from poverty and discrimination, flocked to him; they became "his boys." He recognized that white racism often proved an impenetrable obstacle to the success of his students, but he was an optimist and a dreamer and he tried to instill in them his abiding faith in a just universe. This was partly why he taught a Sunday evening Bible class, which was well-attended during the thirty years of Carver's involvement. The class was a labor of love for Carver, an intensely religious man who viewed the Creator as good and saw evil as the result of man's inability to grasp the good. These religious beliefs informed Carver's outlook on white racism.

"Carver's boys" initially were drawn from the Tuskegee student body. But over the years, as his fame and interests widened, Carver came into contact with young men from all over the South, some of whom were white and all of whom frequently sought his advice. Many of these contacts came through speeches Carver gave to the Atlanta-based Commission in Interracial Cooperation and the Young Men's Christian Association. Both groups were committed to furthering interracial harmony, and in his speeches Carver would scan the audience for faces that seemed interested in what he was saying. It was in this way that Carver met Jim Hardwick, a descendant of slave owners. Hardwick had been captain of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute football team and was now looking for a way to be of Christian service. Hardwick became one of Carver's boys and the two had a long correspondence, with many of the letters from Carver addressed to "My Beloved Boy."

Late in his life, Carver wrote a letter to Dana Johnson, another of Carver's protégés, as was his brother Cecil, in which he tried to express how much these young men meant to him. "Not a day passes," Carver stated, "that I do not think of my boys and often wonder just what they are doing." He continued, "It is such an inspiration to me to watch the progress that you and your brother have, and are yet, making, and the future that will doubtless be yours as young aspiring American citizens who must figure into the building up of this great American commonwealth..."³ For Carver, who never married and had no children, the friendship, love, and dependence of these young men meant as much to him as his advice meant to them.

¹ Washington to Carver, February 26, 1911, Booker T. Washington Papers (online version), vol. 10, p. 594.

² Linda McMurry, George Washington Carver: Scientist & Symbol (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 97

³ Carver to Dana Johnson, February 14, 1942, in Gary Kremer, ed., George Washington Carver: In His Own Words (Columbia, Missouri: The University of Missouri Press, 1987), p. 191.