Unsung Heroes: York
A Black History Month Series
Welcome to our blog series “Unsung Heroes,” lifting up Black leaders around the world for Black History Month. Because of my extensive travel experience and the ways those travels influenced my life, worldview, and career, I find it important to not only lift up Black American voices during this month, but Black voices from around the world. This is consistent with my perspective that we are celebrating Black History Month and not just African American history month. Stick with us this month to learn about some relatively unknown, uncelebrated Black heroes.
A Black Pass
We begin with York, an enslaved African who traveled on the Lewis and Clark Expedition from 1803 to 1806 crossing the newly acquired western portion of the U.S after the Louisiana Purchase. York, called “Big Medicine” by many Native Americans, is recognized to be the first Black man to reach the Pacific Ocean. Many journals suggest that the color of his skin enchanted many Native nations to the extent that they apparently gave the expedition a pass through their land. The intrigue of York’s story lies in the erasure of his contribution and his story alongside the Eurocentric, whitewashed history of Europeans “exploring” the North American continent.
An Explorer
Born around 1770, York would have been about 34 when he set out with Lewis and Clark’s “Corps of Discovery.” His work on the expedition, including risking his life to save Sacagawea and William Clark during a flash flood, caring for a sick traveler, hunting, and being allowed to vote on major Corps decisions, was valuable but apparently not valuable enough for William Clark to free York upon their return. Clark wrote, in response to York’s request for freedom, “I did wish to do well by him. But as he got such a notion about freedom and his emence [sic] Services…I do not think with him, that his Services has been So great/or my Situation would promit [sic] me to liberate him.” The disregard of York’s humanity and the dismissal of his work on the dangerous expedition point to the White supremacy so central to the concept of Manifest Destiny.
White Supremacy
Further, York’s participation in the Corps of Discovery almost certainly meant that he participated in the violence against and subjugation of Native American nations that the Corps encountered. Again, the White supremacy that allowed enslavers to pit African Americans against Native Americans and vice versa, to imbue enslaved individuals like York with an anti-Native American sentiment because of what he was required to do for the Corps, is astounding. Driving all of this violence, of course, was the greed of colonization and capitalism — wanting to make a profit off of the land and seeing people as property and culture as a commodity.
York was eventually freed by William Clark, given horses and a cart, and began a hauling business. However, the trauma induced by his travels and the erasure of his story from the history books is but one of the many struggles inflicted upon Black and indigenous Americans as part of Westward expansion.
With Honors
In 2015 I took my family to Louisville, Kentucky to visit the Muhammad Ali Center. Nearby at the Riverfront Plaza/Belvedere we saw a beautiful statue of York with a plaque commemorating his participation in the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Though my two eldest sons at the time were young teenagers, the stories told, lessons learned, and questions asked while honoring York have had a lasting impression on us all. Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon also hosts a statue in his honor. In recognition of the significance of the man, his life, and his legacy, in 2001, President Bill Clinton posthumously granted York the rank of honorary sergeant in the U.S. Army.
Stay tuned for our next Black History Month post!
Sources
https://www.nps.gov/people/york.htm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/01/12/york-slave-lewis-clark-expedition/
