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Discovery of the North Pole > 
When Peary and Matthew Henson, America's greatest Negro explorer, went to Greenland in 1891, the quest for the North Pole was just taking form in Peary's mind. It grew into a determined challenge between these men and the elements in the subsequent expedition and the many that followed, until eighteen years later in 1909, on the seventh expedition, Peary, a tired man of fifty-three, crippled by the amputation of his toes ten years previously, and Henson, the great Negro, stood side by side at the apex of the earth.
The discovery of the North Pole is one of the noblest stories in the history of exploration. It is a story of the battle of two invincible Americans against the terrible elements of the Arctic; a battle which lasted eighteen years and left one of the Americans, a steel-willed man of grit, a cripple for life. It is a human story filled with tragic suffering, pathos and humiliation. And it is noble, because these two Americans, who made the last great discovery in the Northern Hemisphere, were a white man and a Negro.
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