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He (Matthew Henson) is a better dog driver and can handle a sledge better than any man living except some of the best Eskimo hunters. I couldn't get along with him." --Explorer Robert Peary.
Do you think Robert Peary discovered the North Pole alone? Peary was the only white man who reached that spot on April 6, 1909--with him were four Eskimos and Matthew Henson, a multitalented black man without whom Peary could not have succeeded. Commander Donald B. MacMillan, one of the white men sent back to safer surroundings before the final push to the Pole, said that "Henson, the colored man, went with Peary because he was a better man than any of his white assistants."
Henson certainly came to the journey prepared. Born in Charles County, Maryland, in 1866, he went to sea at age 13 as a cabin boy and became an able-bodied seaman and read widely during his six-year sojourn. Back ashore, he worked a stevedore, a bellhop, a laborer and a coachman before returning to Washington, DC, where a store owner recommended Henson as a valet to accompany Peary when he surveyed a canal route through Nicaragua. Peary soon realized that Henson's ability to help chart a path through jungles and his experience as a seaman made him invaluable. Subsequently, Peary took Henson with him on all seven of his eight trips to the Arctic, between 1891 and 1909, and was greatly aided by Henson's command of the Eskimo language.
However, Peary made Henson promise not to lecture about the historic final trip (promise he kept until financial need forced him to break it 12 years later). And even after Henson disclosed his role, his contribution went largely unrecognized for many years--primarily because of his race.
But the Explorers Club made Henson a member in 1937; Congress awarded him one of the joint medals for the North pole discovery in 1944; the Geographical Society of Chicago gave him it's Gold Medal in 1948, and Presidents Truman and Eisenhower saluted him in ceremonies in 1950 and 1954, the year before he died.
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