It’s one notable achievement to reach the North Pole at the age of 75 and then become the first Black woman to reach the South Pole four years later. That woman was Barbara Hillary and if she didn’t get the headlines she deserved then, she is now being hailed in obituaries in major dailies. Hillary, a retired nurse, died on Nov. 24 in a hospital in Far Rockaway, Queens. She was 88.
Exploring the poles at any age is a dangerous enterprise, but Hillary—and it’s hard not to think of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the famous conquerors of Mt. Everest—did it in her seventies. And the mere thought of a Black woman, no matter the age, engaged in such feats is absolutely incredible.
Incredible may be the watchword in Hillary’s extraordinary life that began on June 12, 1931 in Manhattan. Her beginning in life was less than auspicious when her father died when she was three. But her mother, Viola Jones Hillary, who was a determined and caring mother who had migrated from South Carolina, made sure her children would get a good education. As a domestic worker, she earned her living cleaning houses and raised her daughters in Harlem.
You gather some notion of Hillary’s sense of adventure from her devoted mother and from her early love for stories about characters enduring extreme circumstances, and nothing captivated this young reader like “Robinson Crusoe.”
It was during her commencement address at her alma mater, the New School, formerly the New School for Social Research, Hillary divulged some facts about her early life. “We were poor,” she recalled, “we were Depression poor, but there was no such thing as mental poverty in our home.”
As a student at the New School, Hillary majored in gerontology, earning both a bachelor and master’s degree. According to her website, she used her research and study in gerontology to establish a career in nursing with an aim of training staff on the particulars of the aging, as well as their health delivery systems in nursing homes and similar facilities.
Hillary was the founder and editor-in-chief of The Peninsula Magazine, a non-profit and multi-racial magazine in Queens. It was the first magazine of this sort in the region. She was 67 when she had the first of two life-threatening illnesses, including breast cancer, which had first occurred in her twenties, and cancer of the lungs. Meanwhile, she continued working as a nurse, driving a taxi, and her involvement in community activities such as the Arverne Action Association in Far Rockaway, of which she was a founder. These multifaceted activities did not stop her interest in such hobbies as archery, learning how to handle guns, growing roses and tomatoes.
As if following the advice she gave students during that commencement address, in which she reminded them that “At every phase in your life, look at your options. Please do not select boring ones”—she ventured into exploring the world’s most challenging regions. These pursuits began after a 55-year career as a nurse and participating in a dog-sledding event in Quebec, Canada. It was during this event that she learned that no Black woman had ever ventured and made it the North Pole, something Matthew Henson did in 1909.
Beyond the challenge of the trek, Hillary had a number of obstacles to overcome, to say nothing of her age and past health issues. There was also the training necessary and the expenses. She had no funding and no organizational sponsor. Moreover, she had lost 25 percent of her breathing capacity as a result of surgery from lung cancer.
To complete such an arduous journey, Hillary had to learn how to ski, which she humorously observed “wasn’t a popular sport in Harlem.”
“In preparation for the trek,” one news story reported, “she took cross-country skiing lessons and hired a personal trainer. She started eating more vegetables, increased her vitamin intake and worked out with weights. And she raised the necessary $25,000, mostly through donations, for equipment and transportation.”
There are several routes to the North Pole and Hillary decided to take her trip with Eagles Cry Adventure, which meant she and her travelers would be deposited at a Norwegian base camp, about 30 miles from the North Pole. A newspaper reported on her venture: “As the sunlight glinted off the ice, distorting her vision, Hillary struggled beneath a load of gear and pressed on. In her euphoria at reaching the Pole, she forgot the cold and removed her gloves, causing her fingers to become frostbitten.”
She said, “I have never experienced such sheer joy and excitement. I was screaming, jumping up and down, for the first minutes.” The trip to the top of the world only whetted her appetite for more such treks and in 2011, she stood at the South Pole.
One of the consequences of these trips was educational: she gained a better understanding of climate change and its impact on the globe, particularly what was happening with the melting of the polar caps. This sparked her interest in the subject, and she was soon lecturing on the topic at various conferences and events.
A year before her death, Hillary traveled to Outer Mongolia, where she visited a nomadic tribe whose way of life was rapidly disappearing because of climate change and desertification of the steppes.
Even as she satisfied her dreams of adventure, Hillary never strayed too far from her sense of service, and the issue of climate change gave her journeys an even deeper and wider concern for humanity.