Cyborg Roots: Rethinking George Washington Carver in the Context of Black Children’s Literature

African American children’s literature puts into words and pictures the stories that have been orally told for generations as new stories from the imagination. Nonfiction children’s literature utilizes George Washington Carver’s story to help students view science as a human endeavor. The relationships between facts and what many refer to as “the nature of science” attribute to the characterization of Carver and his importance to science. Through images, acknowledgements, and citations, the depictions establish authority over the facts of Carver’s story. Little attention has been given to how authors imagine Black futures through their historical depictions of George Washington Carver. The author's choices to challenge authority invites readers to critically engage with the informational text through questioning. In this paper, we argue that George Washington Carver’s initial emergence in children’s literature symbolized the invention of a “Black Cyborg”  in nonfiction children’s literature. To investigate, a codebook was generated based on Sanders and Bishop, with sub-codes from Ford. The books were selected as narrative nonfiction and published before 1959 in accordance with Bishop's restrictions applied to develop the three categories for fiction. The books selected were George Washington Carver Scientist by Shirley Graham (1944); The Story of George Washington Carver by Arna Bontemps (1944); Carver’s George by Florence Means(1952); and Boy scientist by Augusta Stevenson (1954). The diverse publication dates and authors encapsulate the change in the conceptualization of Carver’s story. Our paper concludes that the construction of Carver's story should not be taken as fact, but rather it should be seen as a literature of questions. His story has always been used to advocate for the educational liberation of Black people,inspiring Black futures in science. The ways in which authors challenge authority affirm that his story is never objective.