ScienceMakers Toolkit Manual - The History Makers

Life Science
they really felt no continuity; they really felt abandoned. And I agreed to help them, I didn’t know how I was
going to do it, but I came back to the U.S. and I wrote the Secretary of Defense. I wrote the president. I asked
for permission to take a plan to go up and bring these people back to visit the sites of signifi cance in their
fathers’ lives including Arlington National Cemetery, where Peary was buried. And short, I was granted permission
and given the support of the White House, at that time, President Reagan. And I was permitted to go up and
bring them to America, and when we got to Washington, D.C., they were presented fl ags that had fl own over
the capitol. They were, they met with government offi cials, Matthew Henson Day was proclaimed in the City of
Washington. I was able to take them around, they visited the gravesites of their fathers.
And then it became clear to me what the racial discrimination of that time again did to Henson. Not only did
history try to drop him out of any recognition for what he had done for his country in reaching the North Pole,
which had great signifi cance militarily, in terms of the pride of the nation, they dropped him off. And so Peary
was celebrated by National Geographic. In fact, National Geographic gave Peary and others on the expedition
wonderful privileges. Gave Peary a gold medal, the highest medal. Gave Bob Bartlett, another member of the
expedition, their gold medal. Gave other members medals. But they wouldn’t even recognize Henson. That
was the nature of the racism and the supremacy felt by the people at National Geographic at that time. And I
fought for years to get Henson recognition. But fi nally I got from the President when I realized that Henson
was buried in a common grave in New York, I asked the President to permit me through a Presidential order to
disinter Henson in Arlington National Cemetery—disinter him in the common cemetery, and common gravesite
in Woodlawn and reinter him with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery for what he had done
for his country. I was granted permission to do that. I brought the young people back, I brought the family back
from Greenland on a military jet, and there I was able to let them take part in the ceremony, and I was able to
bring the old men to America to reach out and touch their relatives for the fi rst time, both on the Henson side
and on the Peary side, which is a white family in America that initially rejected even this Inuit man who at age
83 only wanted to meet a relative. But I fi nally persuaded them that the fair and decent thing to do would be
to meet him and welcome him and he was fi nally welcomed in his brother’s home in Augusta, Maine, his fi rst
time.
Clip 7 - Push for a Monument to Slaves: We have nothing to represent the millions of Africans and African
Americans who lived and died in the helotry of slavery as we know it. And so I’d like to see in my lifetime
some monument, not hidden off in some corner but on the Mall, to the contributions made to the advancement
of this nation by people who were forced to work for nothing, who formed the free labor force for people who
had no other basis for owning them than they were white.
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