Matthew Henson

Henson was born on August 8, 1866, on his parents' farm east of the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland, to sharecroppers who had been free people of color before the American Civil War. Matthew's parents were subjected to attacks by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, who terrorized southern freedmen and former free people of color after the Civil War. To escape from racial violence in southern Maryland, the Henson family sold the farm in 1867 and moved to Georgetown, then still an independent town adjacent to the national capital. He had an older sister S., born in 1864, and two younger sisters Eliza and M. Matthew's mother died when Matthew was seven. His father Lemuel remarried to a woman named Caroline and had additional children with her, including daughters and a son. After his father died, Matthew was sent to stay with his uncle, who lived in Washington, D.C. (Georgetown was made part of Washington, DC in 1871.) The uncle paid for a few years of education for Matthew but soon died. Henson attended a Black public school for the next six years, during the last of which he took a summer job washing dishes in a restaurant. His early years were marked by one especially memorable event. When he was 10 years old, he went to a ceremony honoring Abraham Lincoln, the American president who had fought so hard to preserve the Union during the Civil War and had issued the proclamation that had freed slaves in the occupied Confederate states in 1863. At the ceremony, Matthew was greatly inspired by a speech given by Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and renowned orator, the long-time leading figure in the Black American community. Douglass called upon Black people to vigorously pursue educational opportunities and battle racial prejudice. At the age of 12, the youth made his way to Baltimore, Maryland, a busy port. He went to sea as a cabin boy on the merchant ship Katie Hines, traveling to ports in China, Japan, Africa, and the Russian Arctic seas. The ship's leader, Captain Childs, took Henson under his wing and taught him to read and write. ==Exploration==

While working at a Washington D.C. clothing store, B.H. Stinemetz and Sons, in November 1887, Henson met Commander Robert E. Peary. Learning of Henson's sea experience, Peary recruited him as an aide for his planned voyage and surveying expedition to Nicaragua, with four other men. Peary supervised 45 engineers on the canal survey in Nicaragua. Impressed with Henson's seamanship on that voyage, Peary recruited him as a colleague and he became "first man" in his expeditions. After that, for more than 20 years, their expeditions were to the Arctic. Henson traded with the Inuit and mastered the Inuit language; He was remembered as the only non-Inuit who became skilled in driving the dog sleds and in training dog teams in the Inuit way. The National Geographic Society as well as the Naval Affairs Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives both credited Peary's team with having reached the North Pole. ==Later life==

In 1912 Henson published a memoir about his arctic explorations, A Negro Explorer at the North Pole. In this, he describes himself as a "general assistant, skilled craftsperson, interpreter, and laborer." He later gained renewed attention. In 1937, Henson was admitted as a member to the prestigious Explorers Club in New York City, and in 1948 he was made an honorary member, of whom there are only 20 per year. In 1944 Congress awarded him and five other Peary aides duplicates of the Peary Polar Expedition Medal, a silver medal given to Peary. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower both honored Henson before he died in 1955. Henson died in the Bronx, New York, on March 9, 1955, at the age of 88. He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery and survived by his wife Lucy. After her death in 1968, she was buried with him. In 1988, both their bodies were moved for reinterment at Arlington National Cemetery, accompanied by a commemoration ceremony. ==Family==

Henson married Eva Flint in 1891, but their marriage did not survive their long periods of separation, and they divorced in 1897. He later married Lucy Ross in New York City on September 7, 1907. They had no children. During the extended expeditions to Greenland, Henson and Peary both took Inuit women as "country wives" and fathered children with them. With his concubine, known as Akatingwah, Henson fathered his only child, a son named Anauakaq, born in 1906. Anauakaq's children are Henson's only descendants. The existence of Henson's and Peary's descendants first was made public by French explorer and ethnologist Jean Malaurie who spent a year in Greenland in 1951–1952. S. Allen Counter, a neuroscientist and director of the Harvard Foundation, had been interested in Henson's story and traveled in Greenland for research related to it. Learning of possible descendants of the explorers, he tracked down Henson's and Peary's sons, Anauakaq and Kali, respectively in 1986. By then the men were octogenarians. He arranged a visit for them the following year to the United States, where they met American relatives from both families and visited their fathers' graves. Anauakaq died in 1987. He and his wife Aviaq had five sons and a daughter, who have children of their own. While some still reside in Greenland, others have moved to Sweden or the United States. ==Legacy and honors==

in Arlington, Virginia, U.S. • On October 19, 1909, Henson was the guest of honor at a dinner ceremony held by the Colored Citizens of New York, where he was honored by toasts and given a gold watch and chain. • In 1937, The Explorers Club, under its "polar" President Vilhjalmur Stefansson, invited Henson to join its ranks. • In 1940, Henson was honored with one of the 33 dioramas at the American Negro Exposition in Chicago. • In 1945, Henson and other Peary aides were given U.S. Navy medals for their Arctic achievements. • In 1948, the Explorers Club awarded the explorer its highest rank of Honorary Member, an honor reserved for no more than 20 living members at a time. • In 1954, Henson was invited to the White House. • Before his death in 1955, Henson received honorary doctoral degrees from Howard University and Morgan State University. • On May 28, 1986, the United States Postal Service issued a 22 cent postage stamp in honor of Henson and Peary; they were previously honored in 1959, but not by name. • In 1988 Henson and his wife Lucy were reinterred in Arlington National Cemetery, with a monument to his exploring achievements, near Peary's grave and monument. Many members from his Inuit descendants (Anauakaq's children) and extended American family attended. • In October 1996, the United States Navy commissioned USNS Henson, a Pathfinder-class oceanographic survey ship, named in honor of Matthew Henson. • In 2000, the National Geographic Society awarded the Hubbard Medal to Matthew A. Henson posthumously. in Pomonkey, and elementary schools named for him in Baltimore and Palmer Park, Maryland. • The Henson Glacier (Greenland) was named after him. • In 2008–2009, a 100th anniversary expedition to the North Pole was undertaken in honor of Henson by Dwayne Fields. • In 2009 at larger-than-life statue of Mathew Henson and his lead sled dog, King, was created by John J. Giannotti. It stands in front of the Camden Shipyard & Maritime Museum, located at 1910, S. Broadway, Camden, NJ, in the Waterfront South Historic District. A plaque on the base of the statue commemorates a ship called the Kite. Stones brought back on the Kite from one of the Henson-Peary explorations were used to build part of the former Church of Our Saviour. This historic structure is now home to the museum and the Mathew Henson Arctic Explorer Room. • In October 2020, the previously named Columbus GPS Block III satellite was renamed after the launch as Matthew Henson. • In September 2021, on the proposal of an intern at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, a crater at the south pole of the Moon, located between Sverdrup and de Gerlache craters, was named Henson after him. == Representation in media ==

• "Matthew Henson, Black Explorer" is part of the series "The Scooby-Doo Gang: Black Explorers" released in 1978 by Hanna-Barbera Educational Filmstrips. Catalog number 52410. • S. Allen Counter's book, North Pole Legacy: Black, White and Eskimo (1991), discusses the explorations, as well as Peary and Henson's "country wives" (Inuit women) and their part-Inuit descendants, and historical race relations. He made a film documentary by the same name, shown on the Monitor Channel in 1992. • Donna Jo Napoli's young adult novel, North, is set against Henson's life and role in polar expeditions. • In 2012, the German artist Simon Schwartz published a graphic novel about Henson, entitled Packeis (pack ice), which won the Max & Moritz Prize for the "Best German-language Comic Book." The novel was published in English as First Man: Reimagining Matthew Henson in 2015. • In the graphic novel Sous le soleil de minuit, published in 2015 by writer Juan Díaz Canales and artist Rubén Pellejero, Henson helps Corto Maltese in his Alaskan adventure in 1915. • Henson's story is featured in ''Kevin Hart's Guide to Black History'' on Netflix. • Henson is named in response to the question "Who was the first man to set foot on the North Pole?" in Stevie Wonder's song Black Man on the album Songs in the Key of Life. • His life and the polar exploration is retold in the 1948 radio drama "Arctic Autograph", a presentation from the Destination Freedom series, written by Richard Durham. ==Notes==