Matthew Henson: Courageous Discoverer Despite Racism

North Pole. Today we're going to talk about Matthew Henson, who was born in August of eighteen sixty six in Maryland to actually free black Americans before the Civil War, which is already interesting and unusual in and of itself. So maybe we could talk a little bit about what we do know of his early family life. There are actually some conflicting accounts, believe it or not. Henson wrote a book about their achievement of reaching the North Pole after they did that in nineteen o nine, and he

had a very brief discussion of his young life. He, like you said, was born right after the Civil War in Maryland and Charles County, Maryland, which during the Civil War was a slave area. Maryland was a border state, part of the state was free, part of the state still held slaves. So he was born into a really tumultuous time period. It's hard to say exactly how that shaped him, but I think it must have, especially that

his parents were free. They were never enslaved people, and I believe they were farmers or worked in kind of a rural economy. But when he was really young, either he ran away from home because he had a cruel stepmother, or he and his family moved to Washington, d c. And there he went to school for a period of time. Important also to note that his mother died when he

was seven. I mean that is a significant and traumatic loss for anyone, and even in those days when one was more likely to die young, still a big loss, and left the father to ultimately remarry and have a stepmother to whom it seems he was not as close or as comfortable with. He did have an older sister

and two younger sisters. And also important is to know that while it was unusual and as you said, a tumultuous time to be free and black and living in Maryland, they were subjected to attacks by the Clue Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups who were intent on terrorizing people who were formerly free, and that must have also been difficult and traumatic. That's a scene that we see in a biography that was written with Matthew Henson by

Bradley Robinson UM in the sixties forties. There was one in the sixties two that took heavily from that, but I think it was maybe in the forties or fifties,

and that was not uncommon in Maryland. From what I understand, it seems to me likely that he would want to have gotten away from that kind of persecution, and so he eventually made his way to Washington, D C. He did say in his nineteen o nine twelve Sorry book after he went to the North Pole that he attended the m Street School, which was a really well known, really respected school for African American students, and it was run by a number of really progressive African American educators UM,

which is kind of exciting. It was a really good thing for him to have gone to that school. Was that school in Washington, d C. Or in Georgetown? At the time, Georgetown was a separate part from Washington, D C. The two cities were right next to each other, and they were a bit separated, but they did eventually join together.

So I think it is in Washington d c though, and do we know anything about the kind of student that he was, I mean, realizing that he was only able to stay in school limited time, but in this school. I haven't been able to find any information about it.

I have looked into it, because he does speak at times in his later writing about poetry, about Dickens, about books that he really liked to read, which, again it's hard to say for sure, but maybe he picked up from one of these progressive educators at the m Street School a love of reading or literature, or just an

interest in the world beyond his own life. So it's hard to say what kind of student he was, but he was at least very curious and at least very adventurous, because he did then join the crew of a ship called the Katie Hines. He made his way to Baltimore and signed up as a cabin boy on this ship to go back for one second, because so he's in school, but his father dies and he has to actually go live with an uncle. And that's important just because at

a young age he's cut loose, right. He doesn't have parents anymore really officially, and the uncle did pay for a few years of his education, but he also died, so in a sense, I just think it's important to understand that he had this childhood of frightening things going on in terms of attacks on the family. Then he loses his mother, then he loses his father, Then he lives with his uncle, who also dies, and so he

doesn't have continued parental let's say, guidance or support. He's forced at a pretty early age to leave education and to strike out on his own. I think that is part of his character. He was always a very kind of going against the grain person. I mean, being a polar explorer. To begin with this like pretty unusual, but you know, when you think of like, what are these early roots of independence to the level that you are intent on being in some very difficult environment that no

one has ever gone to before. He came from a difficult environment and at a pretty early age was jettisoned into the world, and you could say forced to make way on his own, to be an explorer of the

world on his own. But you could also say there clearly was something about it that he easily adapted to and even embraced that, as you said, went with his character, went with his temperament, right, And one thing that kind of struck me is that, as you mentioned, he did not have a very stable family life when he was younger. He lost his parents, he moved around, another uncle passed away who was taking care of him, but he did

find this father figure. I think he was kind of looking for father figures when he signed up on the crew of the Katie Hinds with Captain child He describes Captain Childs as someone who cared for him, who helped teach him about the world, and really became like this person and who he looked up to. So he was on this ship and with Captain Childs four or five years. This is during his teen years, correct, right. I believe Captain Childs passed away in eighteen seventy eight, and that

would have made Matthew Henson about eighteen ish. That must have been a huge blow to him because he had spent his really formative years with him going where he went on a ship, which is a very enclosed atmosphere to begin with, and it really did kind of throw him for a loop because after that he traveled around a little bit. He wasn't really sure what he wanted to do. He started working, I think for a ceiling enterprise at Newfoundland. He kind of moved around, so he

was a little at loose ends. Although before we leave his time on the boat, Captain Childs taught him to read and write. I mean he had only had a limited amount of education in school. Captain Childs also encouraged him or worked with him on reading and writing, and they went to ports all over the world, which, again in terms of what drives someone to become an explorer, he, as you said, in these formative years, he went to China, Japan,

and Africa and the Russian Arctic seas. This is a form of exploring or seeing the world at a very young and formative age with somebody who does take on a father figure sort of role, and that seems likely

to be formative, also formative. To go back one more second, it's reported that he or he reported, I think, at age ten, going to a ceremony that honored Abraham Lincoln, who was known at that point to have worked on preserving the Union during the Civil War and had issued the proclamation that freed slaves in the occupied Confederate States, and he heard Frederick Douglas, an escaped slave and renowned

orator of the time. Time and a leading community member for the black community, and that seems to have made a real impression. There's no doubt that his time with the ship must have broadened his horizons as well as hearing these speakers. I've always kind of wondered, like how much Captain Child's taught him to read and write if he had been at school. I kind of have wondered

about that. There's a little bit of disagreement in the historical sources, but there's no doubt that Henson learned from Captain Childs, and he really became this person that guided his life in a way that a parent would have. And I think it was really formative for him during his teenage years when he really didn't have any roots anywhere else. He kind of was a little bit of

a rolling stone. I guess you could say, right right, It's almost like learning a trade, which in those days the idea of apprenticeship, and that is how you learned to have the vocation that Captain Childs showed him, how he sailed the world. Do we know anything more about the ways in which you may have been affected by hearing Frederick Douglas speak. To be honest with you, I'm actually not familiar, just because I try to stick with what I can verify from Henson's own writings, and there

aren't that many of them. And I feel that some of his later biographers embellished a lot of the details of his life. And that may have been because they wanted to portray Henson as a unique and heroic figure, which he was anyway, but they may have, you know, larded it a bit. So it's hard for me to say, we don't know for sure about that because he didn't make reference to that. It's kind of the hard thing we have about Henson's life, I feel is that he

didn't leave a lot of writing behind. I mean, he only did write one book. One of the reasons he wrote only one book is because, jumping ahead a little bit, Robert Perry after their North Pole expedition prohibited members of the expedition from writing books. Perry wanted to be the only one who had the book deal and sort of was the only one who was permitted to do a

lecture tour and kind of publicized the things. So we don't have a lot of personal memoirs from Henson, although I wish we did, because he had a fascinating life, so shades of the suppression to come before we get there. He is then working at a Washington, d C. Clothing store in November eight when he meets Commander Robert Perry. Can you tell us a little bit about that meeting and how it would come to be that Perry would say, okay,

work with me. Yeah. I think this is one of the most serendipitous meetings in the history of exploration because it was totally unexpected. Because Henson, after he left the Katie Hines and Captain Childs had passed away, he moved in with his sister in Washington, d C. And started working at this hat shop um or a furrier sort of. The shop did a number of things, was kind of

a haberdasher, and he was a clerk there. And so one day Robert Peary walked in and one story says he was looking for a son helmet because he was on his way to Nicaragua to scout for a canal, which eventually became the Panama Canal. But at the time the Navy was considering sites in Nicaragua, so Parry was on his way because he was a civil engineer in the Navy to do some scouting and he needed an

assistant of Valet. So the other clerk at bh Stein Medicine, Son said, well, I have my coworker here, Matthew Henson. He's been all around the world. He's a very capable man. Why don't you talk to him? And so they seem to have really hit it off, which is incredible. And Henson must have impressed Perry with his resourcefulness, his practical skills and things like carpentry, sailing, seamanship, things like that.

And I feel that they must have had kind of a connection over being curious about the world, about being ambitious and curious, and that combination really kind of colored their relationship from then on. So Henson and Perry went to Nicaragua. They you know, it was their only warm weather expedition together. And when they got back, Perry again was working for the navy, and Henson kind of did a couple of odd jobs, but then Perry eventually got him a job at the Naval Yard of Philadelphia. From

there they embarked on a number of polar expeditions. Because Perry was pretty obsessed with making his mark in the world. I mean, really, that was the driving thing in his life. And he wanted fame. He wanted his name out there, and polar exploration or some sort of feat in the Arctic was his ticket to that um in his mind. So by the time that Henson and Perry met, Arry had already been in Greenland once and he did an expedition.

There was kind of a finding mission. He did a little bit of exploring, but was kind of getting his bearings and figuring out, like, Okay, now that I know this about Greenland, what do I really want to do here that's going to get me the fame that I crave. So Henson, having proven his worth on his Nicaragua expedition, went with Perry to Greenland, to the Arctic, to other parts of the Arctic for the next twenty years on seven expeditions. Perry had eight expeditions to the Arctic and

Henson was on the latter seven of them. They spent eighteen years on expeditions together. Yeah, and in the most brutal conditions you can imagine two and oftentimes it was just that two of them. So it was a very close working relationship. But at the same time, Perry was quite driven again by his own sense of fame and accomplishment, and I think that prevented him from being completely warm

and completely a friend to Henson. So it remains sort of you work for me as the relationship, and I am the leader director of this, and sometimes it was the two of them. Sometimes he recruited people familiar with the area. And what is amazing is that Henson really learned the language and learned the ways, it sounds like more so than Perry. Absolutely. Yeah, let's take a quick break here. We'll be back in a moment. Perry often

hired the same Inuit people. He visited a particular village frequently on subsequent expeditions and tended to hire the same people since they knew each other they'd worked together, but he never really became involved with them. He always looked at them as servants, helpers, employees. They had specific and very important jobs. They drove dogs, LEDs, which is extremely complicated, and so Perry really relied on them, But he also thought of himself as sort of they're kindly father slash

employer slash leader. Henson, on the other hand, really took to their culture. It's exciting to kind of learn how he was instructed by a lot of the indigenous hunters and dog drivers in this particular village. They kind of took Henson under their wing a little bit because I think he showed that he was genuinely interested. His curiosity went beyond place and mission. It went to the people and the culture and a willingness to learn and absorb.

And he was the only one who learned how to drive the dogs LEDs in the group that was not intuit and how to train the dog teams in that way, that really speaks to a curiosity dry of an empathy in the direction of other people and other cultures, sort of like an anthropologist in a way. He was definitely interested in them and on a very genuine person to person level, which is extremely uncommon between explorers who, for lack of a better term, kind of parachute in to

do their mission and then leave. So for that reason, Henson is unique and I think that makes him a really interesting figure. And not only did he show that he was genuinely interested in the folks there, but they looked at him as a unique person. They gave him a name, which is sort of their way of bringing the person into their culture, into their lives, and in English it means the kind one. They called him Matthew the kind one, and they gave Perry a nickname two.

But it was basically like Perry the man, Perry the leader kind of person, wasn't really wasn't really like indicative of his his friendliness. But the other thing is like, it takes a really long time to learn how to drive dogs. Well, I mean, it is really hard, and the dogs have their own minds. They just decide where they want to go, and you have to just kind of go with them and try to steer them in

the right way. And they're quite wild and they kind of have to work out their own hierarchy among themselves. And to be able to do this well as someone who didn't grow up obviously having the skill or being taught the skill over many years when he was younger, is really an amazing feat. And so in addition to the dog driving, like you said, he learned how to speak Inuktitut, which is the native language in that area.

By doing so, I think ingratiated him even further into the community, and it showed the new wheat there that he was serious, he was someone who could be trusted, someone who respected them, and of course it then gave the native people they're more confidence in helping Perry. I mean, Henson was really a liaise on between the Hinu wheat and the white people on the expedition, and he performed

a really important role in that way. To speak for a moment about his personal life before this, he did marry. He married Eva flint In, but it sounds like his being off and exploring basically dissolved the marriage because they divorced In he later married. He later married Lucy Ross in nineteen oh seven. But somewhere in here he's gone for much of the time on these Arctic explorations. He is not having children with either wife, and he takes a Innuit wife or at least a partner, and does

have a child. He apparently had a relationship with the new Wheat woman over a number of expeditions, so it wasn't just, you know, a one and done scenario, for lack of a better word. He really cared for her, and I believe when I was speaking with the director of the Perry McMillan Arctic Museum, she said, at some point this woman died and Henson was just devastated. I don't know much about her, but we do know more about his son that he had with this woman. Did

she die when he was still with her? I thought that basically when he left the region, that was it and he never saw her again or the sun. But I was unaware if she died while he was still there. That was my inference, because he didn't go back to the Arctic after they achieved what they went to achieve in reaching the North Pole. Neither Perry nor Henson ever

returned to Greenland or that part of the Arctic. So my impression was that she must have died while he was there or during the period of years where he was going there regularly. Both he and Robert Perry also had an involvement with a woman. Both of them had sons. Actually Perry had two sons, but one passed a way I think when he was young. So Perry's son was

named Kelly and Henson's son was named a Knockock. And they grew up in their community, but they looked a little different from some of the other people in their community, and so they wanted to know more about their biological fathers. The people in the community were quite willing to share

stories about them. I mean it was no secret, but they had never met any of their family from the United States before, and so that became something that the two sons really really wanted to do, or they really really wanted to learn more about their families and their

fathers as well. So unfortunately, the two sons did not meet their fathers when they were alive, but they did go to the United States eventually thanks to the efforts of Harvard neurologists named s Ellen Counter, who was a really interesting polar explorer and figure, and he brought the two wings of the Perry and Henson families together in the nineteen eighties. And it was a really amazing story.

But it brings up a lot of questions about, you know, what these kids were thinking in their lives, you know, knowing that they had fathers but they were so far away and that they may never meet them. But it sounds like in some ways they were remembered by the people, at least certainly Henson was as heroic and kind. Let's talk about the expedition. I mean, there were many expeditions.

As you said, there were seven expeditions, but ultimately the nineteen nineteen o nine expedition, which was Perry's eighth attempt to reach the North Pole, and it was a large expedition. This is the one, right, This is the one where ultimately they did reach the North Pole. They got close to the North Pole. Yeah, they thought they reached the North Pole. They thought they did, right. That is an important distinction, I guess. Yeah. In the expedition was the

Cherry on the Sun Day. Because Perry and Henson had spent two decades getting to this point. I mean every time they went to the Arctic, they learned something new, they scouted new roots, they acquired the services of certain people, and they set the groundwork for it each time. So in nineteen o eight they had a pretty clear idea of what they wanted to do. So they left New York.

They traveled north. They stopped off in Newfoundland to get some supplies and um they eventually made their way to this particular village called Eta in Greenland, where they picked up their innuitae helpers. They had like a whole community with them. They had like twenty two Innuite men, seventeen Innuit women, ten children, two hundred forty six dogs, tons of whale meat, tons of walrus meats. It sounds like

moving a village. It almost was, because Perry hired the men to drive the dogs and scout the roots and be the guides. But he also hired the men's wives too, soak clothes to tan hides of the animals that they caught. The men and the women seemed to have specific and important roles and so each kind of fulfilled that role in Perry's mission. And of course they wouldn't leave their children behind, so of course the kids came along too, So it really was like moving a whole community from

their home village to this totally barren seacoast. None of them, I think, were too familiar with it, just because they had no real reason to go there from their own village, so it really was kind of this slightly unfamiliar territory.

But they did have enough animals to hunt, they had plenty of food, and most of them stayed with the ship when they eventually set up their base camp at I believe Cape Sheridan, which is one of the northernmost points in Canada, meaning like the nearest land to the North Pole, which is still over four miles away, So

they set at their base camp there. They stayed the winter and in the spring, Perry and a number of his white crew members and Henson and the Inuhite guides started doing what was called the Perry system, which was this system of relays where a party that included like one of the Americans and one of the Inuhite people, and maybe like a couple of others, went out a certain distance, built an igloo and set out a cache of supplies and food, and they did so at like

certain intervals along the route that Perry had laid out on his way to the North Pole. So this would basically set the sort of stages of the push for the pole, and so Perry didn't need to like spend time building the houses. He didn't have to carry anything with him, which was also really important because the more weight you have on your sledge, the slower you go.

So he basically just marched several miles head, stopped for the night, made camp at the cash of supplies and the eggloo that was already there, and then moved ahead and moved ahead. So they did so over a number

of weeks. They had to cross open water, and it was extremely dangerous because they never really knew how thick the ice was um when it was forming over these areas of open water, and at one point Henson fell in and it's death within just a few minutes because the water is so cold, and it's very difficult to get yourself out because your way down with these furs

and these kind of like heavy clothes. So the head in wheat guide, who was named Utak, basically just reached into the water and pulled Henson out with just his bare hands and saved his life. And that happened a couple of times. I think that happened to Perry once, and it was not uncommon, but it was extremely scary

and dangerous when it did happen. I guess it's important to remember that part of the I guess claim to fame is that this whole thing is so dangerous all around, and that it takes such physical ability and stamina to even be part of a group that would do something like this. Part of the ultimate conflict about who reached the North Pole first was that Perry in fact had

a difficult time and wasn't doing well. Perry had actually lost eight of his toes to frostbite on a previous expedition, so ever since then he was not real fast on his feet. I mean he would kind of shuffle a little bit and hobble along. So at times he was pulled on his sledge by the dogs while the guides and Henson were kind of breaking the trail ahead of them. So it was really dangerous. They had storms, obviously, it was extremely cold. They you know, just kind of faced

a test of endurance. So when they got to what they believed was the North Pole, it's kind of funny that they went through so much hardship. It's hard to fathom really over so many years, especially on this particular voyage. It was just kind of like we just wanted to accomplish what we came here to do. When Perry believed he reached the North Pole, he said, it's just so simple and commonplace. I can't bring myself to believe. It

just seems like any other day in the Arctic. But they did get to the point where they believed they needed to be, and then from that point on it was like a race home. They had to go back to the iglues that they had stayed in on the way up, and by that point the food caches were pretty much depleted, so they were in a race not just against exhaustion and cold and everything, but they were really running out of supplies. So part of the goal was to live, to be able to enjoy the fruits

of your discovery. Absolutely. I mean, that's that's the key. It's like I was speaking with a an adventurer and mountaineer um for our podcast and he said, you know, getting there is only like half of the struggle. In fact, it's probably less than half the struggle, because getting back is the harder part. Actually, before we before we get to the way back, Henston is noted to be said at some point that he was in the lead on

that ultimate trip. As we were pointing out that that Perry was off and on a sled or and somewhat behind, and that he'd overshot the mark by a couple of miles. He quote went back then and could see footprints that were his at the first spot. So it sounds like he believed that he was the first man literally to stand at the north pole. Yeah, he I believe, said that in a newspaper interview many years after their expedition.

But yeah, I mean that essentially says like if being first is the number one claim to fame here, that we're all chasing. Henson is saying, I was the first one there. And there is a photo of him with the Inuit guides on this last stretch, and Perry is not in it. No, Perry is taking the picture, which is a little bit It's funny because I I noted

that too. I mean, there are no pictures at least that I'm aware of, of Perry at the North Bowl, but there are um a number of pictures that Perry took with his Kodak camera of Henson and the four guides. They're holding the flags of the expedition, the flags that Perry brought with him to represent his various sponsors and things like that. So then now they're running back and it and it's even more difficult. Do they know yet that another team that Frederick cooked team is saying no,

actually we got there first. They have no idea, um, and in fact, they feel no pressure from anyone else. I mean, they didn't see anybody else there, so right, they figured to a team. Okay, no, they were figured they were all alone, and uh, they had no idea and so um, you know, they weren't really in a huge hurry to like rush home and tell everybody. But they they definitely like you know, kind of gathered up

all their equipment. They dropped off their innuite helpers at their village, and they paid them with um various goods like guns and ammunition and knives and needles and things that are are rare in that part of the world. And then they just steamed their way home. And their first stop was in Newfoundland where the telegraph office was. That was like the that was where they told the world.

But before they got there, they stopped in Eta, where they dropped off the Inuit families, and there was a hunter there that Perry had dropped off the year before, an American hunter named Harry Whitney, who had spent the whole winter there like hunting musk ox and polar bears. And when Perry returned after having been on the North Pole journey, Whitney said, well, there's this other guy here, Frederick Cooke, who said he got to the North Pole

a year before you did. And he just left like five days ago or a few days ago to go to Europe to um the Shetland Islands where there was a telegraph office, and he told the world that he had gotten to the North Pole in April of but he left all of his records with me, Perry Whitney, and so Furry was like, well, I'm your only way home and the only way you're going to get on my ship is to leave all of Cook's records here.

So I'm, you know, summarizing the situation, but I think that really is illuminating of Perry's sense of competitiveness and his addiction to like being first, being the one who earned the glory. And let me also add it perhaps is a peek into his moral compass as well, that what mattered more was being able to claim the victory then actually have the victor jury In the words, he understood at that point it might not be him, and he was willing to do something underhanded to make sure

that other people didn't know that. He and Henson Um and Donald McMillan, who was another person um in Perry's expedition crew, spoke with the two in white men who had been with Cook in their own language and so there was no misinterpretation. And Um they asked him like asked them, are you serious, Like did you actually get to the north Pole? Like how how do you know

that you did that? And they said well, you know, we went a pretty long ways, but um, we never lost sight of land, and you cannot, you know, stay withinside of land and still get to the North Pole because it's so far away. So Henson, Perry, and McMillan at that time were convinced that had not done it, and so they really didn't They weren't worried about it. They were like, well, you know, there's just no way.

There's plus, they all already knew Cook. Cook had been on at least one of Perry's expeditions about twenty years ago, and Henson and Perry were both like, this guy could never make it. I mean he just as he's a nice guy, he's charming, he's a good doctor, that's why he was on the expedition to begin with. But he's his wilderness skills are just really some far. So there's just no way that he could have done it. So

they weren't really worried. And by the time they got to Newfoundland to telegraph the fact that they had reached the pole, they were quite confident that they were the first ones at the poll because even though Cook had said, you know, yeah, I got there a year before, they were like, we have the eyewitness accounts from the guides

who were with you saying that it didn't happen. But the world at large had already heard that Cook had had been there, and so five days later, when Perry telegraphed that he had been to the first at the poll, people did not know what to think. And um it quickly became like a huge battle between Perry's backers and Cooks backers, and the media that supported them, and the organizations that supported them and everything. And it became a huge controversy that even as late as the eighties and

nineties was still being debated. Let's take a quick break here, we'll be back in a moment. Sadly, it seems that, as you alluded to earlier, Perry did what many white men sadly did, which was to suppress all credit that belonged to anyone else in his group. And he very much, it seems, did that to Henson very much, made it seem as though he it was only Perry and not actually Henson. A sad and common historic tale which made it difficult for Henson to be recognized for what he

did for decades. It's a really sad coda to their triumph and to their relationship to Perry was so concerned with making his name immortal as the first man to

have reached the North Pole. It really became his singular focus, and he made sure that no one else that was on the expedition could write a book or publish memoirs or do a lecture tour, which was one of the main ways that polar explorers made money was showing like slides lantern slides of their photographs that they took while they were there, and then doing a lecture tour about

um about their experiences. There was there was an incident in which Henson said, I took a number of slides there of lantern slides, and I, as directed, gave my slides to Parry so he could choose the ones that he wanted to use. But then he never paid me for them and never gave them back to me, so he then, you know, did not have the materials to do a lecture tour, even though Henson did do one, kind of against Perry's wishes, And when Perry found out,

he was quite angry and urged him to stop. And I think that caused a big rift, not just from Perry's point of view, but from Henson's Henson was like, I need money more than you do. I have fewer opportunities to make a living than you do. And I was just as part, a big a part of this mission as you were, even though I was not the leader.

And so I can't help but think that Henson felt quite betrayed, having spent the better part of his life helping Perry achieve his goals and then not being recognized for that. Henson did publish a memoir in nineteen twelve. That's right, Yes, he did publish a memoir in nineteen twelve, after Perry had said, Okay, well enough time has passed for me to reap the benefits, you can go ahead and do yours. So he did. And it's actually a

really interesting book, you know. I feel like it's even though it's not an autobiography as it's sometimes called, it's really just a story of Henson and Perry getting to the North Pole in nine nine. It does reveal their relationship,

I think pretty well. And even though Henson is extremely loyal and I think doesn't want to bad mouth his his boss, if you read between the lines a bit, you can kind of see that Henson looks up to Perry as as a father figure and is, like I said, extremely loyal and will really do anything to help him achieve periods goals, including at some level accepting something that sadly,

I mean really tragically was commonly done. In fact, you know, in this in this podcast, I do know to repeatedly how often I try to look at a story and see a black person, a Hispanic person, a woman who was involved in a discovery or creation that is has tried to be removed from or sanitized from the credit that has just been suppressed. And that seems to have really been the case here. And it was really only in later years that Henson was recognized for the work

that he did. It seems in many accounts every bit at least as important, if not more in some ways than what Perry did. But ironic Lee he wins an award, that's the Perry award that he is, you know, a late addition to various societies and organizations that he is the first black man to be a part of or recognized in that way, But well after the time that

it would have been expected he would be. I think Henson was dismissed and erased from the white centered narrative of their expedition and later on, and that was a lot of Perry's doing. And also the backers of his expedition wanted to avoid the questions of race, and they called it the racial issue, and so like there was a lot of there was a lot of questioning from Perry's backers that was which was a group of philanthropists

called the Perry Arctic Club. Why Perry chose Henson and not one of the white members of his expedi Asian to go to the North Pole with him to go that last leg to the actual North Pole. And Pierry said, well, it's because he was the best qualified for the job. I mean, he could do everything that I needed him to do. And the white members of the crew backed that up. They were like, we are not as good as you know, We're not as good as Henson, So

it made sense for him to go. But because he was African American, the philanthropists that we're backing Perry were like, well, this is bad optics. I mean, this is not a good look to have, you know, a black man at the pole standing right next to you, you know, just to be blunt about it, and I think they had a role in erasing Henson from the narrative. However, I will say that one thing I discovered, and I think that is the general feeling, is that Henson has been

dismissed from this narrative. He was forgotten, and that is true among you know, the dominant narrative. However, I realized that Henson was never forgotten by the African American community, especially in New York UM where he lived. He was honored by the leading African American civic groups by you know, religious leaders who were members of of these sort of organizations. He was given a gold watch and um, these kinds

of tokens of their appreciation. He was talked about in UM African American media like Essence magazine and the Amsterdam News. And Henson was quite active in the community as well. Um, he was really well known. He worked after the North Pole expedition. He worked as a clerk in the U.

S Customs Office. So he lived in New York. He lived in Harlem, he worked downtown in Lower Manhattan, and by all accounts, he was a charming, charismatic, very friendly, beloved person and someone who people really respected and really thought was an incredible person and role model. And the thing that kind of shows this clearly to me is that when Perry died in he was given practically like a state funeral. I mean it was like the Vice President at the time was one of the Paul bearers.

I mean, every Supreme Court judges, all kinds of you know, leading Washingtonians, because Perry lived in Washington, turned out for the funeral. There was a big like procession and everything, and he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with a gigantic headstone that had a big globe on top saying like I got to the top of the world. Pretty much. This was covered in all the papers. There were obituaries and every paper there was, you know, first day, second day,

third day stories all about it. And in contrast to that, when Henson died, he died in in New York. He was eighty eight years old old, and he really barely got to mention in the New York Times, his hometown paper,

or any other paper. However, the Amsterdam News, which was an African American newspaper, had an account of the funeral, which was at the Abbyssinian Baptist Church, which is like the main Church in Harlem, and Adam Clayton pell Jr. Who was a very prominent minister, did the service and over a thousand people attended, and there was a huge write up in this paper. And um, one of the paul bearers was Peter Frikin, who was a Danish polar

explorer and one of Henson's closest exploration friends. And I believe McMillan was there as well. Um, they were quite close as well, because at that point he was a member or admitted to the Explorers Club in New York and Congress had awarded him the Perry Polar Expedition Medal. He was honored and recognized, and you know, very late, but but acknowledged in that way. And those people, we're part of his community as well. Yes, yeah, and it's it's hard for me to accept in a way, but

he was eventually honored. Um. The reason I say it's hard for me to accept because I'm I'm looking at the Explorers Club, which grew out of the Peri Arctic Club, the very people who sent him up to the Arctic region, and it didn't accept Henson as a member until nine and he was their first African American member. That was twenty years after he had been to the North Pole

with Perry. Reflection of the continued racial prejudice, right, Um, but you know, just based on his own accomplishments and his own his own merit, I mean, there should have

been no question. And similarly, as you're pointing out, though he was recognized in the African American community for the incredible accomplishments that he did, and in his as you said, burial, he it was I think when he and his wife were moved to Arlington National Cemetery where Perry is and commemorated in that way that I mean, it's incredible that the racial prejudice continued to in a way, you know, long beyond his death, really deny Henson the kind of

recognition that he had deserved. Yeah, it was Henson's wish that he would be buried next to Perry, and when he died, I mean they really, the Henson's did not have a lot of money and so when he passed away, Um, he was buried in the same plot as his wife's mother in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx and just didn't have enough money to you know, get anything larger or more prominent or whatever, although wood Lawn Cemetery was apparently very happy to have him there, and we're kind of

upset that he got moved in the eighties, But it was Henson's wish to be buried next to Perry, and that eventually happened through the efforts of s Allen counter Um, the Harvard neurologist and polar explorer who you know, wrote to the Reggae Administration UM over several years to try to get Henson the recognition that he deserved from the government um in this way, and eventually that was successful,

and he is now there next to Perry. Amazing and so curious, right that he would want to be next to Perry after really what sounds like a conflicted ending for their relationship. I think, yeah, it does, But I also think it is kind of revealing of Henson's sense

of loyalty as well. I mean, when you kind of take a step back, it's true that Henson had Perry to thank for his life of adventure, because he was hired by Perry and was his assistant for all of those years, and perhaps he felt thankful for that, and perhaps he appropriately wanted to go down in history ultimately right as his partner. That's possible. Yeah, I mean that wouldn't be out of out of the question, and I think it is really fitting that he's there now. That

wraps things up for this episode. Thank you to my guest cat Long. If you want to know more information on Matthew Henson, listen to her podcast History Versus Season two The Quest for the North Pole. If you'd like to know more about the concepts and Personalogy, you can check out my book The Power of Different The Link Between Disorder and Genius For psychological advice me take a listen to my podcast How Can I Help? And follow me on Twitter at Dr Gail Saltz until next time.

Personalogy is a production of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are doctor Gayl Saltz and Tyler Clang. The associate producer is Lowell Berlante. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.