Dr. Edna Greene Medford, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History at Howard University

When Robert Peary searched the North Pole in 1909, he was accompanied by his closest companion Matthew Henson. Henson, an African American, had been born in rural Maryland just after the civil war. The Peary-Henson association, remarkable for its time, saw both men achieve their Polar triumph but then frayed in what were very different afterlives. Dr. Edna Greene Medford tells a story that is in equal parts: grand adventure, high drama and human conflict.