Carver's ability to develop new products, especially from the peanut, cemented his fame, and that fame spread after his House testimony and his quasi-adoption as the peanut industry's spokesman. In the 1920s a number of newspapers in the South touted his accomplishments and saw him as an example of the New South, a movement that preached a degree of interracial harmony based on economic opportunity for blacks. Carver's multifaceted role as an example of what blacks could achieve by dint of hard work as well as the use of his success by others to promote racial harmony must be remembered in any assessment of him.

Carver's stature as a symbol had become fixed by his later years. Various groups adopted him as an emblem for whatever cause they represented. It is no wonder that the country was quick to make his birthplace in Diamond Grove, Missouri, a national monument, the first such honor bestowed on a black.

¹ Quoted in Gary Kremer, ed., George Washington Carver: In His Own Words (Columbia, Missouri: The University of Missouri Press, 1987), p. 17.