{"id":439,"date":"2020-06-09T06:51:53","date_gmt":"2020-06-09T06:51:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/arctic-relations\/?p=439"},"modified":"2022-04-13T20:51:11","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T20:51:11","slug":"conjuring-matthew-henson-african-american-polar-explorer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/arctic-relations\/conjuring-matthew-henson-african-american-polar-explorer\/","title":{"rendered":"Conjuring Matthew Henson: African-American Polar Explorer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Carole Boston Weatherford<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was growing up in Baltimore, my father taught at Frederick Douglass High School, his alma mater and for years one of only two local high schools that admitted blacks. Among the school\u2019s former faculty was Herbert M. Frisby (1888-1983), a biology teacher, historian and advocate for the African-American community. Frisby was studying at Howard University in 1909 when Henson reached the North Pole. Awed and inspired, Frisby vowed to follow in Henson\u2019s footsteps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frisby spent five years searching for his hero\u2019s birthplace in southern Maryland and carried a piece of wood from the cabin to Henson in New York, sparking a lasting friendship.  As a correspondent in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands for the Afro-American Newspaper<\/em> during World War II, Frisby wrote of encounters with the Inuit people. He later mounted a one-man crusade to get Henson recognized as co-discoverer of the North Pole\u2014credit long denied due to the color of his skin. Frisby\u2019s efforts on his idol\u2019s behalf led to a Baltimore elementary school being named for Henson and the placement of a memorial plaque commemorating Henson in the Maryland State House. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frisby himself made 26 trips to the polar regions, spent two months living in an igloo with an Inuit family, and flew over the pole, dropping a steel box containing an American flag and bronze plaque honoring Henson. Frisby curated a museum in his home with artifacts from his arctic travels. Through my father\u2019s connection to Mr. Frisby, I first learned about Matthew Henson. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years later, I visited the state house to see Henson\u2019s plaque<\/a>. I was working on my first poetry collection, Remember the Bridge: Poems of a People. <\/em>That book included a poem celebrating African-American exploration, from Estevanico\u2019s quest for the legendary Seven Cities of Gold to astronaut Mae Jemison\u2019s voyage into outer space. The poem also hailed Henson. Like a few other subjects who made cameos in my earlier books, Henson would eventually get a book of his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Matthew A. Henson’s plaque \u00a9 Herbert Frisby<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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My children\u2019s picture book, I, Matthew Henson: Polar Explorer<\/em><\/a> is a biography in verse and my third collaboration with illustrator Eric Velasquez. Told in first person, Henson\u2019s remarkable life story unfolds through poetic vignettes\u2014each introduced by a negative statement conveying his resolve to rise above the ordinary even in the face of adversity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had not stuck by Peary for decades,<\/em>
Sharing the same goal, only to reach a fork<\/em>
When our journey was on its last leg.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To achieve their shared goal, Henson battled both racism and the harsh polar climate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n