Imagine for a moment that you helped discover something amazing – something that people had been seeking, without success, for years.
Now imagine that because of the color of your skin, you receive no recognition for your part in this great discovery. For years, your role in bringing about this great discovery goes completely unnoticed while others are feted.
Welcome to the world of Matthew Henson.
Henson was the invaluable companion of Robert E. Peary who, during the early years of the 20th century, sought desperately to reach the North Pole. Finally, on their last attempt in 1909, the pair reached the North Pole. Yet because he was black, Henson received no credit for his role in this pioneering achievement for years.
Henson was born in Charles County, Maryland, on August 8, 1866 – a little over a year after the end of the Civil War enabled him to be born a free man.
However, that didn’t stop the Ku Klux Klan from terrorizing the African-Americans in the area, forcing Henson’s family to flee to Washington, D.C. Orphaned by age 12; Henson worked a menial job to support himself. Seeking something better, he walked 40 miles to Baltimore’s waterfront in search of a job on board a ship. Fortunately, Henson met Captain Childs, skipper of the three-mast merchant ship Katie Hines.
Childs, an enlightened man for the times, took Henson aboard and over the next four years taught him reading, writing, carpentry, ship’s mechanics, and more. Henson sailed around the world on the Katie Hines, seeing places that most people, black and white, only knew by name, including China, Japan, Spain, Russia, and North Africa.
However, the death of Childs, and Henson’s subsequent unhappy passage on another ship showed him just how limiting and prejudiced the America of the late 19th century could be for a black man. Henson quit the sea and took a job as a clerk in the Washington, D.C. hat/furrier-store of B.H. Steinmetz and Sons. It was not a terrible job, but to someone who had seen so much of the world, it must have been terribly stifling.
In August 1887, Henson met Robert Peary when Peary came into the store needing a sun helmet. Even though Peary was going to Central America, his real interest was in a much different direction: North. Peary was determined to be the first non-Eskimo to cross Greenland and then the first to reach the North Pole. He hired Henson as a servant for his Nicaragua trip, but soon realized that Henson’s other skills, such as shooting, surveying, carpentry, and canoeing, made him an invaluable asset for any polar expedition.
Even though many warned him – completely in earnest - that no black man could survive in cold climates, Henson did not hesitate to accept Peary’s invitation. From June 1891 to August 1902, Henson and Peary spent seven years in the Arctic, traveling 9,000 miles by dogsled across northern Greenland and Canada’s Ellesmere Island.
“I can’t get along without him,” Peary said of Henson. This was especially true in 1899, when Henson saved Peary from dying of gangrene.
Peary and Henson then attempted to reach the North Pole several times over the next few years, but each trip ended unsuccessfully. As always, Henson proved invaluable. He handled the dogs, built sleds, broke the trail, and learned the language and survival skills of the Eskimos.
In July 1908, worn down by fatigue and age, the two made their final attempt at the North Pole. The trip was again extraordinarily perilous. At one point Henson fell through the ice and nearly drowned, but was pulled out of the freezing water just in time by his Eskimo companion.
On April 6, 1909, Henson arrived at a spot 45 minutes ahead of Peary and concluded, by dead reckoning, that he had reached the North Pole. Henson had an amazing ability to dead reckon. Once he won a bet with Peary by estimating their position in his head after a journey of 1,000 miles.He was off by just 20 miles.
When Peary got there, Henson greeted him by saying “I think I’m the first man to sit on top of the world.”
Peary did not take this news well. “He got hopping mad…” Henson wrote. “…He didn’t say anything, but I could tell.”
This was not a momentary snit either. “From the time we knew we were at the Pole, Commander Peary scarcely spoke to me,” Henson wrote. On the journey back to their ship, Peary broke Henson’s heart by going on ahead without waiting for him.
After the ship docked, the two parted without a word.
“After twenty-two long years of service with Peary we are now as strangers,” Henson wrote sadly a few years later.
It got worse for Henson. Blacks were invisible in early 20th century American society, and Henson’s role in the polar expeditions was ignored. Doubters assailed Peary’s claims of reaching the pole, particularly how it was possible to achieve such a thing with an “ignorant negro” along. Henson tried to mount a lecture tour talking about his arctic adventures. Peary warned him not to use pictures Henson himself had taken of the expeditions. The tour was finally cancelled, partly because of bigots in the audience. Peary was promoted to admiral in the U.S. Navy; Henson worked in a garage. In 1926, 1936, 1938, and 1949, Congress rejected bills that would have given Henson a pension for his role in arctic exploration.
In 1939, an obscure magazine named Ken published an interview with Henson done some years before when he worked as a clerk for the U.S. Customs House. “I have not expected much, and I have not been disappointed,” Henson said. However, he also admitted to disappointment. “For more than 20 years I have been waiting for a stranger to come through this door to say, ‘Matt Henson, you did your duty as a man should.’ Now that it has happened to me…it hurts me to know you are a white man. All these years I have hoped [that] the person who should first seek me out would be one of my own race.”
The honors came for Matthew Henson after he died in 1955. He was portrayed on a postage stamp, had a naval survey ship named after him, and was posthumously awarded the National Geographic Society’s prestigious Hubbard Medal in 2000.Various buildings and facilities have been named for him, and in 1998, a TV-movie was made about him.
In 1988, Henson’s body was reinterred in Arlington National Cemetery. It is here that the great explorer sleeps – unknown no longer.
Sources:
“A Negro Explorer at the North Pole” Matthew Henson.
“Matthew Henson – Explorer” Michael Gilman
“To the Top of the World” Pauline K. Angell
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0110_030113_henson.html
http://www.unmuseum.org/henson.html
http://www.matthewhenson.com/1939_KEN.html