George Washington Carver is best known for his work to develop and promote alternate crops to cotton: sweet potatoes and peanuts. He wrote 44 practical bulletins for poor Southern farmers, the most popular of which contained 105 recipes that included peanuts. Believed to have been born in Missouri before slavery was abolished there, he went on to work to imp[rove race relations and make his mark in painting, religion, and poetry. Booker T. Washington invited Carver to Tuskeegee Normal and Industrial Institute (later Tuskeegee University) to lead the agriculture department. Taking the position only five years after the school was founded, Carver remained there for 47 years.