HENSON, MATTHEW ALEXANDER (8 August 1866–9 March 1955), American explorer born to free Black sharecroppers in rural Maryland, who co-discovered the geographic North Pole at the dawn of the twentieth century. From the age of twelve, Henson traveled the world’s oceans, notably visiting the continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe. As an experienced seaman, Henson became a close colleague of Robert Edwin Peary, accompanying him on multiple expeditions, including voyages to the Arctic from Greenland undertaken from 1891 to April 1909, when Henson, four Inuit guides, and Peary claimed they reached the Arctic Pole. Despite being—along with the Inuit—the first to have reached that point, Matthew Henson died largely uncredited for this polar triumph. In 1988 Henson’s body was reinterred at Arlington National Cemetery, and he was posthumously granted full military honors and national recognition for his achievements.
Henson was orphaned as a boy. He spent much of his youth aboard the merchant ship Katie Hines, sailing throughout the world. He eventually returned to Washington, D.C., where he would meet Peary in 1887 while working as a clerk. Peary, then a young naval engineer, hired Henson to help accompany and assist him on a trip to Nicaragua, where he was impressed with Henson’s navigation skills, knowledge, and resourcefulness. The two soon carried out seven additional northern expeditions together under Perry’s aegis. For a brief period between 1895 and 1898 Henson worked at the American Museum of Natural History on its Arctic dioramas, but he otherwise dedicated much of his working life to Arctic excursions.
On April 6, 1909, Henson, Peary, and the Inuit guides reached the North Pole and became the first recorded men in history to reach that geographic extent. On its grounds, they planted an American flag to claim ownership of the discovery of the region for the United States. But according to legend, it was Henson and the Inuit men who were the first of the Arctic expedition to arrive at the North Pole, Peary having become unable to continue on foot and riding behind on a dog sled. Nonetheless, history generally remembers White explorer Robert Edwin Peary as the hero of this record of American discovery at the dawn of the twentieth century.
Furthermore, many histories crucially neglect Peary’s insistence on Henson’s companionship. Not only was Henson an experienced explorer, but he also fostered deep relations with the Inuit in Greenland, learning their language and leaning on indigenous understandings of their land. He photographed the Polar expedition—although many of his widely circulated photos were later usurped by Peary. By all accounts, the North Pole’s discovery hinged on the knowledge and expertise of Henson, a Black man. Against the inescapable violence of White supremacy and Jim Crow, Henson did forcibly gain some recognition as an accomplished explorer, navigator, and mariner in his own time, engendering dreams for Black Americans in the scientific fields related to exploration. And yet, many today have never heard of Matthew Henson. When he died in 1955, he was buried as a relatively poor man, uncredited by his nation as co-discoverer of the North Pole. The Peary-Henson relationship ultimately saw two men achieve an accomplishment with very different afterlives: while Robert Edwin Peary was lifted as an American hero, Matthew Henson was rendered virtually invisible. In Henson’s autobiography, A Black Explorer at the North Pole, he wrote: “Another world’s accomplishment was done and finished, and as in the past, from the beginning of history, wherever the world’s work was done by a White man, he had been accompanied by a Colored man.”