Matthew Henson

As steam and rail shrunk the globe at the turn of the twentieth century, the race was on to claim the last great prizes of exploration, and of the globe’s rapidly diminishing list of untouched extremes the geographic North Pole was literally and figuratively at the top.

The first to reach the Pole would secure glory and undying fame, not to mention considerable monetary rewards. The stage was set for drama, and a cast of larger-than-life figures assembled, but none could predict the plot twists and still-unresolved controversy that would unfold. Central to the story, though rarely invoked by name, was Matthew Henson. Born in Maryland to a family of free Black sharecroppers a year after the Civil War, Henson became a global explorer of the first order at a time when African Americans faced unbearable social restrictions.

Matthew Alexander Henson was born on August 8, 1866, on his parents’ farm in Nanjemoy, in Charles County, Maryland. The family fled racial violence the following