1951 - 1954 Washington Carver Silver Half Dollar

This was the last design released for the early commemorative coins,  which also makes it a significant collectors piece.    The coin bears conjoined profile portraits of George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington. Booker T. Washington founded, in 1881, the Tuskegee Institute, a black college in Alabama. He tried to fight discrimination through education and the creation of black businesses, to build a black middle-class. This approach was later over-turned by the NAACP, which worked for change at a political level. George Carver was born into slavery, but became a botanist and agricultural scientist, as well as a professor at the Tuskegee Institute. He developed alternative crops to cotton, as the repeated growing of this crop was depleting the soil. He introduced peanuts and sweet potatoes, to enrich the soil and provide direct food for poor Southern farmers. Like Booker T. Washington he believed in advancement through personal improvement and increased wealth, rather than through political action. The  coin features both portraits in profile, surrounded by lengthy inscriptions reading United States of America, In God We Trust, E Pluribus Unum, George W. Carver, Liberty, Booker T. Washington, Half Dollar, and the date. On the reverse was a simple map of the United States of America, curiously with Delaware omitted. The inscriptions read Freedom and Opportunity for All and Americanism. This commemorative coin was issued by the U.S. Mint, struck in 90% silver and  comes encapsulated in a wooden display box.