James Nathan Calloway

James Nathan Calloway was an American agriculturalist who was born into slavery in Tennessee. He graduated from Fisk University before joining the faculty of the Tuskegee Institute, initially as a lecturer in mathematics, and became manager of the institute's largest farm in 1897. In 1900 he was selected to lead an expedition to German Togoland to promote cotton production, where he bred a strain of the plant suited to local conditions before returning to the United States a year later; the experimental station he founded remained in use until 1919 and established cotton as a staple crop of the colony. He later returned to Tuskegee as farm manager and taught agriculture there until at least 1930.