The Official Black History Thread!!!! (GREAT READ)

“I was in the lead that had overshot the mark a 
couple of miles,” Matthew Henson told a reporter in March 1955, relating
 the moment when, 46 years earlier, he knew he had conquered the world. 
“We went back then, and I could see that my footprints were the first at
 the spot.”
“The spot” was the geographic North Pole, the 
literal roof of the planet. Achieving that distinction had long been the
 Holy Grail for explorers, adventurers and scientists. Henson’s claim to
 being the first human to set foot on the Pole on April 6, 1909, has 
been a sore point with others inclined to believe, as has been insisted 
for generations, that superstar Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary was the 
first to reach the Pole. 
Over the last century, a growing body of credible 
evidence has come to the conclusion that 100 years ago today, Henson, 
not Peary, reached the Pole first. Still the Peary myth remains. That 
lingering distortion of fact is the result of the combination of the 
early bloom of our celebrity culture and the persistence of 20th century
 racial bias. Peary was a star and Henson was black; those two factors 
merged to virtually eclipse Henson’s role in conquering the top of the 
world.
Henson’s relatives and others are marking the 
occasion of Henson’s and Peary’s not-quite joint achievement. Centennial
 observances of just about anything are a lock for media attention in 
today’s culture. But honors for Henson, who died in March 1955 at the 
age of 88, are a tribute to his own longevity and a quiet celebration of
 the idea that eventually the truth will take hold. 
Henson had an edge over Peary in advancing the 
historical narrative. First, there was the natural advantage of 
outliving his friend and rival by 35 years (Peary died in 1920 at 63). 
But the suppression of the Henson perspective during the early years of 
the Peary mythos has given way to a positive fascination with Henson’s 
side of the story, a side that has increasingly convinced people that it
 is the truth.
By the spring of 1909, Henson and Peary had been 
friends for more than 20 years, since they first met on an expedition to
 Nicaragua in 1888. An expert navigator who spoke the Inuit language, 
Henson joined Peary several times on various Arctic expeditions.
It was on one such assault on the North Pole that 
Peary, Henson and another 22 men, 133 dogs and 19 sleds set off from 
Ellesmere Island on March 1, 1909.

Henson and Peary had been pursuing the Pole in 
separate dog sleds, alternating responsibility for blazing trails 
through the Arctic’s arduous weather. On April 6, the expedition —now 
streamlined by lighter loads and reduced to Henson in one sled, followed
 by Peary and four of the Inuit crew in another — made one last assault 
on the Pole.

Anna Brendle of National Geographic wrote in
 2003: “On April 6, 1909, Henson arrived at Camp Jesup, 89°47', 45 
minutes ahead of Peary, concluding by dead reckoning that he had reached
 the Pole. Henson greeted Peary, “I think I'm the first man to sit on 
top of the world.”
It was probably no idle boast. The acclaimed science writer John Noble Wilford wrote in the New York Times
 in August 1988: “A new analysis of the expedition diary and other 
archives, focusing on navigational errors, suspect distance records and 
inexplicably blank pages in Robert E. Peary's diary, has raised the 
strongest doubts yet about the credibility of the explorer's claim that 
on April 6, 1909, he became the first person to reach the North Pole.”
Russell W. Gibbons, a contributor to the Arctic Profiles Project of the Arctic Institute of North America, theorized in a June 1987 op-ed
 that race may have been the elephant in the room, that Americans were 
more socially predisposed to the idea of Henson as Peary’s loyal Sherpa,
 his man Friday, the Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote. 
“Henson was an American citizen, but no one, Peary 
evidently reasoned, correctly, would think of a black man as being 
eligible to share polar laurels,” Gibbons noted. “The ‘long and close 
friendship’ of Peary and Henson was not apparent after they returned 
from their expedition: In the decade before Peary died, he did not see 
his fellow explorer once, never invited him to his home and made little 
effort to obtain financial help or recognition for him. Henson read of 
Peary's death in the newspaper.”
Henson, who worked a number of menial jobs after 
the expedition, remains an object of fascination, in no small part 
because of the relative eclipse of his accomplishments. Henson’s 1912 
autobiographical account, A Negro Explorer at the North Pole, was republished in 1997. 
Original copies were once so rare they fetched 
between $1,700 and $3,000 each, according to Bradley Robinson, son of 
Bradley Robinson Sr., who wrote the Henson biography Dark Companion with the explorer in 1947.

Henson was the beneficiary of honors and accolades 
bestowed, as is often the case, after the fact of the honoree himself. 
Over the last 20 years, he has been the object of a cascade of 
recognition. In 1988, at the urging of a dogged Henson champion, Harvard
 professor Allen Counter, President Reagan authorized the move of 
Henson's remains to Arlington National Cemetery. 
In 1996, the U.S. Navy named the oceanographic survey ship USNS Henson for him. Kevin Hooks’ film Glory and Honor (1998) starring Delroy Lindo and Henry Czerny, also celebrates Henson’s exploits.
In November 2000, Henson became the only person to 
be posthumously awarded the National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Medal,
 “for distinction in exploration, discovery and research.” He joined a 
select group of explorers to have received this prestigious award; 
others include Sir Earnest Shackleton, Charles Lindbergh, John Glenn, 
Neil Armstrong—and Robert Peary.
This year, of course, in the centennial, the 
accomplishments of Henson and Peary have captured the attention of 
explorers, endurance athletes and thrill-seekers re-enacting Henson’s 
North Pole expedition on a tour-group basis. One outfit, Polar 
Explorers, assembled a three-day expedition intended to arrive at the 
Pole today with guests celebrating with champagne and souvenir photos, 
after ponying up about $30,000 each for the privilege.
Another centennial expedition is also under way, with three new explorers recreating the 500-mile Henson-Peary route and charting their slow daily progress online.
Aviaq Henson, the explorer’s great-granddaughter, writes on the Matthew Henson Web site
 that Greenland’s national postal service, Filatelia, will release a 
commemorative Matthew Henson stamp on June 21, the day Greenland 
acquires increased self-rule within the Danish Commonwealth. Greenland, 
colonized by Denmark since the 1850s, was granted home-rule status in 
1979. 
“The step will be a big event for our history in Greenland,” she wrote. 
She also announced plans to trek to the North Pole 
this month with her father, Vittus Henson, and his brothers, Ajako, 
Uusaqqak and Qillaq Henson—part of a seriously thriving family tree with sprouts and branches that turn up everywhere. 
Even Hollywood. Taraji P. Henson, nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, revealed in a 2008 interview that the explorer was “my great-great cousin.” 
One hundred years on, as the Henson clan celebrates
 its patriarch, the accomplishments of Henson and Peary are increasingly
 seen through a lens that rescues Henson from disappearing into the 
whiteout of wrong but accepted facts. It’s not a revision of history, 
but a re-visitation of history, one meant to reconcile the differences 
between the magnetic north of written history with the true north of 
what apparently actually happened. 
Michael E. Ross is a regular contributor to The Root.