At the top of the world the colour line thawed and melted away. In 1909 Robert Peary, a white naval officer, and Matthew Henson, an African American son of sharecroppers, survived ice storms, back-breaking marches and sheer exhaustion to plant the Stars and Stripes at the north pole.
But once the pair set foot back on American soil, the gravity of Jim Crow segregation reasserted itself. Leary was hailed as a hero by the press. Henson went mostly unsung – and was soon cast aside by Peary himself.
