Sorry for the lack of Black History Month Posts. There’s been a lot happening over here. This Black History Month Spotlight is on Matthew Henson. Never heard of him? Me neither. My favorite part of Black History Month is learning new things. I’ve done a lot of these posts over the years and try not to repeat myself, so click on the links for more posts and check out the archives.
Matthew Alexander Henson (August 8, 1866 – March 9, 1955) was an American explorer who accompanied Robert Peary on seven voyages to the Arctic over a period of nearly 23 years. They spent a total of 18 years on expeditions together. He is best known for his participation in the 1908–1909 expedition that claimed to have reached the geographic North Pole on April 6, 1909. Henson said he was the first of their party to reach the pole.
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Henson was born in Nanjemoy, Maryland, to sharecropper parents who were free Black Americans before the Civil War. He spent most of his early life in Washington, D.C., but left school at the age of twelve to work as a cabin boy. He later returned to Washington and worked as a salesclerk at a department store. One of his customers was Robert Peary, who in 1887 hired him as a personal valet. At the time, Peary was working on the Nicaragua Canal. Their first Arctic expedition together was in 1891–92. Henson served as a navigator and craftsman, and was known as Peary’s “first man.” Like Peary, he studied Inuit survival techniques.
Awards And Recognitions
Henson achieved a degree of fame as a result of participating in the expedition, and in 1912 he published a memoir titled A Negro Explorer at the North Pole. As he approached old age, his exploits received renewed attention. In 1937 he was the first African American to be made a life member of The Explorers Club. Then, in 1948 he was elevated to the club’s highest level of membership. In 1944, he was awarded the Peary Polar Expedition Medal. He was received at the White House by Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. In 1988 he and his wife were re-interred at Arlington National Cemetery. In 2000 Henson was posthumously awarded the Hubbard Medal by the National Geographic Society. Even more recently is perhaps the greatest honor. On September 2021, the International Astronomical Union named a lunar crater after him.
How do we have a photo of him?
Fascinating read. Thanks for posting. Great photograph too !
Love these biographies! The challenges this man met are humbling.
The picture is amazing! Nice to hear he was recognized for his accomplishments during his life and remains recognized posthumously. I learned something new today, gives me a little kick of motivation!
Omg Kipper! I’m so glad to see you posting here!
I am also grateful for these posts and learning new things. It is humbling. It’s also maddening as it makes me think of all the now banned books and how the children are going to be deprived of learning our history.
And yes, how do we have a picture of him?
Very cool Tamara! Thank you for sharing this💙
Love this!! Especially since he was an explorer. Btw his book is free on kindle
Will download immediatly. Thanks for posting !
Thank you for this post. He was one of the first Black men I learned about in elementary school for Black History Month in the ’70’s. Love you so much, TT. <3
I remember crying to my mom when I was in kindergarten because a kid called me a n-word and spit on me, and she had to sit me down and explain why. I cried FOREVER because I knew at that moment is DID NOT WANT TO BE BLACK. She told me I had no choice. I was devastated. I wish I could go back in time and talk to baby me, and to tell her she had MANY things to be proud of as a Black American, and she wasn't hated by everyone.
AW! You are very much loved. And Black History is everybody’s history. I’m so sorry that you had to experience racism in KINDERGARTEN! One thing I noticed teaching elementary school especially second grade (my favorite) is that kids are very accepting of other kids. I had a trans kid one year, His name was Chris.
He of course didn’t “identify as trans” but he was very pretty, and sweet and hung out with the girls. Teachers often choose the boys or the girls to line up first based on behavior. When I called for the girls to line up, Chris lined up every time. I never said a word about it. But more interestingly neither did the boys or the girls for that matter. It was what it was and no one had an issue with it. I always wondered how long that acceptance would last for Chris. Probably to about middle school. 🙁
So it is very heartbreaking for me hear that this happened to you in kindergarten. But now you are a beautiful strong black woman inside and out. xo ~tt
I pray now for Chris – God bless Chris abundantly and surround this child with people who love and accept this child as the person they are today and will be forever. May GOD smile upon this person’s life to be blessed in all areas of their entire life, and may they be a blessing to other. Amen.
So sweet. Chris is a grown person by now. I do often think about him/her. He was such a delicate and sweet little boy. 🙂
I said that prayer to him as a child of God; I only wish there were a million more teachers like you on this planet. You quite possibly implanted in him a degree of acceptance that has carried/stayed with him. That is my prayer. God Bless you, Tamara Tattles; He uses you in such a phenomenal way – you educate us in so many ways, you correct us, you mourn with us, commiserate with us, and allow us to be a part of your life. You give us respite in the storms of our lives.
Sadly, I was never valued as a teacher at my schools. Pretty much any of them from college to second grade. While I do have tons of compassion for my students, I have ZERO for the losers who rise to administration. Most administrator are morons. They were only there for the meager checks hoping to rise to a supervisory position. Not all but most administrators are assholes who do not know what they are talking about. They are laughed at by their staff.
That said, I am in no way remarkable. I did love all of my students very much. I was watching The Real the other day and there was a segment about a teacher who let their students opt out of the assignments to … write about something. Maybe why they didn’t want to do it I forget.
This was an option I gave my kids many times. IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. I bought them all journals every year and told them if they just weren’t feeling it, they could journal (or in some cases draw pictures) instead in their journals. They all kept them in their cubbies and when I saw one or more of them take that option, after school I would read their journals. Some were being abused at home, some were hungry because their parents brought them late to school and they had not eaten. when I would take this information to the counselor I got things like “Isn’t it interesting that all of the abused children are always in Ms. Tattles class?
They were literally drawing pictures of their abuse, and writing about it the best they could. Unfortunately, the school psychologist was very busy planning her daughters big fat Athens (GA) wedding and could not be bothered. Teaching is a hearbreaking job in low economic areas. This doesn’t make me a saint. It makes me HUMAN.
Also I got written up all the time perhaps justifiably so, because you know I have a smart mouth with no filter. LOL. I used to have a teacher where we kind of shared a room and she told me I wasn’t allowed to send any school emails without her reviewing them. LOL. She was my friend. I wanted to send things like “Why are we just buying text books from whoever pays us off the most each year instead of what is working?” In my mind, that seems like perfectly good feedback and what is best for students. It didn’t take me long to realize that what is best for students is not the objective. It was frustrating. And when I am frustrated the cunty side of me comes out. 🙂
On to other things. I’m nobody special. I’m just an old fat lady on a couch who is afraid of grocery stores. I just have some good sources. I am so much more in need of you guys than you are in need of me. You guys are the real stars of the site and I would be nothing without you.
Now Let’s line up for lunch, nonbinary, trans, girls, boys, questioning, gay, prefer not to identify…wow… lunch lineup is a lot harder these days.
Oh and Shay, it’s going to be okay. I promise. Adversity only builds strength. You is smart. You is kind. You is important. (my favorite movie line ever and it has taken me a long way.) Never forget that. You matter. It’s been a hard couple of years. You have all seen me wallowing in self pity and depression and anxiety. But we all have each other here. The cranky ones, the sad ones, the happy ones… we are all really up and down right now, but we have this place to comfort each other. Sending you so much love and light, ~tt
My favorite to teach was also second grade. I also taught every grade up to 7th grade. I was pulled from my class mid-year to become a “Title Reading” teacher. My experience throughout all those years is that the kids will follow the teachers lead in behavior toward other students. Since it was okay with you that Chris lined up with the girls, it was okay with them. THAT is the way to teach/model acceptance. By being the role model. I was always “given” the “tough” students. One year I had like 8 of them in my class. We got along as best as we could and I would cry all the way home most days. What was funny was that the next year when the 3rd grade teachers would moan and complain about how the 1 or 2 students that were placed in their rooms behaved, they failed to put together that those students were ALL in my room the year before with no complaints from me.
Sorry for the lengthy post but it really rankles me that teachers don’t get that they set the tone for their room and are so carefully watched by the students for cues on how to behave toward others.
I was also the reading teacher, I was nationally certified in reading. Suddenly many people hated me for that. National Certification is very expensive and supposedly “difficult” (it really wasn’t) but unbeknownst to me many of my colleagues had tried and failed and resented me. Also kids that struggle with reading are always the behavior problems. They are frustrated.
Teachers often send a kid for “time out” in another teachers classroom. They would send their “bad kids” to me. Then the “bad kids” started requesting to go to my class. That pissed the teachers off because they felt I was coddling them and that they were having fun in my class when they should be miserable.
I would bring my kids souvenirs from my travels, little dolls, or other things for the boys. Apparently, that also was me “showing off” because these brand new teachers all lived in McMansions and could not afford to travel. They were also mad that I walked to work and lived right next door in my little ghetto shack. It was a lot to deal with. If I could tolerate them talking about their mucus plugs during lunch…. UGH.
Amazing!
Thank you for this Tamara!!! I had read about him in high school (a millennium ago), but am thrilled to have seen the picture of him you posted. I think that, prior to this, I had only seen a sketch or something like that of him.
I’m still not sure this isn’t a sketch. Did they even have cameras back then?
I did not learn about history at all when I was growing up. My first five years were in private school in Libya and I don’t remember any kind of history. Then we moved around the US a lot up until almost high school and I feel like I missed out on all the history lessons somehow. I certainly never learned about “black history.” I had a really good education in everything else though. When I watch Jeopardy, I never bet on the final Jeopardy question if it is history. I didn’t really even live through “history” I was around for. There was no TV in Libya, I wasn’t allowed to watch TV much in the states. So it’s all new information to me. And very interesting.
Google says the world’s first photograph made in a camera was taken in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. So it’s possible.
Wow thanks Celery McToebeans. And how did I not know I had a commenter named Celery McToebeans! 🙂