George Washington Carver

==Relationships==
[[File:AUSTIN CURTIS - SCIENTIST SUCCESSOR TO DR. CARVER - NARA - 535696.jpg|thumb|''"Austin Curtis – Scientist successor to Dr. Carver"'', cartoon by C. H. Alston]]
Carver never married. At age 40, he began a courtship with Sarah L. Hunt, an elementary school teacher and the sister-in-law of Warren Logan, Treasurer of Tuskegee Institute. This lasted three years until she took a teaching job in California.<ref>Kremer, Gary R., ''George Washington Carver: A Biography'', Greenwood, 2011, {{ISBN|0313347964}}, p. 68.</ref> In her 2015 biography, Christina Vella reviews his relationships and suggests that Carver was bisexual and constrained by mores of his historic period.<ref>Christina Vella, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=CXs-CgAAQBAJ George Washington Carver: A Life] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211215120050/https://books.google.com/books/about/George_Washington_Carver.html?id=CXs-CgAAQBAJ |date=December 15, 2021}}'', Southern Biography Series, Louisiana State University Press, 2015.</ref>

When he was 70, Carver established a friendship and research partnership with the scientist Austin W. Curtis Jr. This young black man, a graduate of [[Cornell University]], had some teaching experience before coming to Tuskegee. Carver bequeathed to Curtis his royalties from an authorized 1943 biography by Rackham Holt.<ref>Rackham Holt, ''George Washington Carver: An American Biography'', Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1943. Quote: "He [Carver] believed that there was something providential in the coming of this young man [Austin], so intensely serious about his work and extremely competent at it, who was at the same time a genial companion; he was proud of him and loved and depended on him as his own son&nbsp;... And the affection was returned in full measure. Mr. Curtis accompanied him everywhere, seeing to his comfort, shielding him from intrusion, and acting as his official mouthpiece."</ref> After Carver died in 1943, Curtis was fired from Tuskegee Institute. He left Alabama and resettled in [[Detroit]]. There he manufactured and sold peanut-based personal care products.<ref>On Curtis' later life, see "Austin W. Curtis Interviewed by Toby Fishbein in Detroit, Michigan, March 3, 1979": Transcript in Iowa State University Special Collections, George Washington Carver File, Box 2, RS: 21/7/2.</ref>