A timeline tracing the history of Black travelers through the centuries
On June 7, 1913, Walter Harper, Harry Karstens, Hudson Stuck, and Robert Tatum were credited with being the first men to reach the top of Mt. McKinley’s, now known as Denali. To mark the 100th anniversary, a team of African Americans did a similar climb. Known as the Denali Expedition,.. Read More…
Barbara Hillary was born in New York City on June 12, 1931, and raised in Harlem. She attended New School University in New York, going on to become a nurse. Surviving lung cancer, she became interested in Arctic travel during her retirement. Raising over $25,000 to fund her expedition to.. Read More…
Sailing a 47-foot boat called The Commitment, William “Bill” Pinkney became the first African American and only the fourth person in the world to solo-circumnavigate the globe by boat. Pinkney’s journey took 22 months to complete and covered 27,000 miles. It began on August 5, 1990 and was completed on.. Read More…
Charles Madison Crenchaw was the first African American to summit Denali, the highest mountain peak in North America, on July 9, 1964. He was one of a team of 15 people led by Alvin E. Randall, all part of the Seattle Mountaineers. Along with being part of the historic 1964.. Read More…
George Washington Gibbs Jr. was born on 7 November 1916 in Jacksonville, Florida. His family moved to New York City, where he attended Brooklyn Technical School and later earned his GED before joining the Navy. Gibbs became the first Black person to reach the South Pole as part of the.. Read More…
There is conflicting information about the early life of Bessie B. Stringfield. Still, it is believed that she was born on the Caribbean island of Jamaica to an interracial couple and immigrated to Boston, Massachusetts, at an early age with her family. Her parents sadly died of smallpox, and an.. Read More…
Matthew Alexander Henson was born in Maryland on August 8, 1866, to sharecroppers who were free before the American Civil War. In 1878 at the age of twelve, Henson worked as a cabin boy on Katie Hines, a merchant ship that traveled to ports in Africa, China, Japan, and the.. Read More…
Before the start of the Gold Rush Era (1848 to 1855), there were just a few dozen Black people in California. After gold was discovered on January 24, 1848 by James Wilson Marshall in Coloma on the American River in California, about four thousand Black people migrated to California. Many.. Read More…
James Pierson Beckwourth, born to a Black mother and White father, was a mountain man, fur trader, and American Western Frontier explorer. Born on April 26, 1798 or 1800 into slavery in Virginia, he was granted his freedom by his White father and master around 1823. He then went to.. Read More…
George Bonga was born in 1802 to Pierre, a freed enslaved African, and his mother, Ogibwayquay. His birth marked the beginning of the freed movement in Minnesota. Bonga was well educated, having gone to school in Montreal, and he spoke many languages, including English, French, and Ojibwe. When Bonga was.. Read More…