Matthew Henson
Matthew Henson (1866-1955) was an African American explorer. Born in Maryland to sharecropper parents, Henson was raised in a family of free Black Americans and spent the majority of his youth in Washington, D.C. At twelve, he left school to work as a cabin boy but soon returned home to a job as a salesclerk at a local department store. There, he met Robert Peary, an explorer who soon hired the ambitious young man as his valet. In 1891, they embarked on their first Arctic expedition, with...
