From York to Glover: What Two Centuries of Erased Exploration Tell Us About Who We Send Into the Unknown

Victor Glover became the first Black astronaut to orbit the Moon this week, a milestone that draws a direct line through more than two centuries of American exploration, back to an enslaved man named York who never received credit for helping chart the western frontier.

Glover, serving as pilot aboard NASA’s Artemis II mission, flew past the Moon on April 6 alongside commander Reid Wiseman, mission specialist Christina Koch (the first woman to circle the Moon), and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The Orion spacecraft carried them more than 252,000 miles from Earth, surpassing the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.

But the psychological weight of Glover’s achievement sits in a deeper history, one that reveals how the United States has systematically erased the contributions of Black explorers even as it depended on them.

York: America’s First Black Explorer

Historian Craig Fehrman has spent years excavating the story of York, an enslaved man who traveled with the Lewis and Clark Expedition from 1804 to 1806. Born around 1770 in Virginia, York was enslaved by William Clark and became a member of the Corps of Discovery, the party of as many as 45 men that traveled over 4,000 miles across the American continent.

York was not a passenger. He was essential.

Fehrman’s research, which includes previously unpublished documents, shows that York served as a skilled riverman, swimmer, hunter, cook, and medic. Only two men in the expedition were chosen to operate the whipsaw, a dangerous and physically demanding tool. York was one of them. He was the fifth named member of the Corps to bring down a buffalo, according to expedition journals.

Recognized by Everyone Except the System

What makes York’s story psychologically interesting is the gap between how he was perceived in the moment and how he was treated by the institution that sent him west.

Native American groups along the expedition’s route recognized York’s significance immediately. According to historical records, the Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa peoples showed great interest in York, with some seeking to touch his skin.

The expedition itself acknowledged his value in one remarkable act: York was invited to vote on where the party would establish its winter quarters. In an era when enslaved people had no legal standing, this was an extraordinary concession to a man whose contributions could not be ignored by the people who worked alongside him.

The federal government paid $274.57 for York’s labor during the expedition. The money went to William Clark.

The Budget Comparison That Stings

One statistic from Fehrman’s research lands with particular force. From 1804 to 1806, the federal government devoted a larger percentage of its budget to the Corps of Discovery than it currently devotes to NASA.

That says something about how seriously the early American government took westward exploration. It also frames the stakes differently. York was not a minor participant in a minor expedition. He was a core member of the most heavily funded government venture of its era, an effort that reshaped the boundaries of the nation. And he was paid nothing.

The pattern of relying on Black labor and expertise while denying recognition runs through American exploration history like a fault line. York’s case is extreme because it involved literal enslavement, but the structural erasure persisted long after abolition.

What Glover’s Flight Changes

Glover’s presence on Artemis II represents something the psychology of representation research has documented extensively: the difference between being invisible and being seen matters to human cognition in ways that affect motivation, identity formation, and group cohesion.

When the Artemis II crew completed their record-breaking trip around the Moon, Glover was not a footnote in someone else’s story. He was the pilot. His name is on the mission. His face is in the photographs.

York’s face exists in no contemporary image.

The psychological distance between those two facts is enormous, and it took 220 years to close.

The Artemis II Mission in Context

The Artemis II mission carried four astronauts approximately 6,400 miles above the surface of the Moon’s far side, reaching 252,799 miles from Earth and exceeding Apollo 13’s record of 248,655 miles. Koch, who holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, became the first woman to fly around the Moon. Hansen became the first Canadian. These milestones matter, but Glover’s carries a particular historical charge because of how long Black Americans were excluded from this kind of work and how thoroughly their earlier contributions were erased.

The Quiet Disappearance of Language

NASA had previously stated that the Artemis program intended to send the first woman and first person of color to the lunar surface. That language was removed from NASA’s website in November 2025, following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump. NASA said the change in wording did not indicate a change in crew assignments.

The removal of language matters psychologically even when actions remain unchanged. Visibility is not just about who flies. It is about who gets named, who gets described, whose participation gets framed as significant. York’s story demonstrates what happens when contributions are real but language erases them.

The government recorded York’s labor. It compensated his owner. It documented his skills. But it did not record his freedom, his agency, or his name in the way it recorded the names of the white men who traveled alongside him.

What Exploration Reveals

Every expedition tells two stories. The first is about geography, about the terrain crossed and the data collected. The second is about the people who did the crossing, what they endured, what they were allowed to claim, and what was taken from them.

York crossed 4,000 miles of uncharted territory, operated dangerous equipment, fed his companions, healed them when they were hurt, and voted on where they would sleep through the winter. He received nothing.

Glover flew 252,000 miles from Earth, piloted a spacecraft around the far side of the Moon, and came home as a named member of a crew that set a distance record for human spaceflight. The gap between those two experiences measures something real about how the country has changed.

It also measures how far there is still to go.

Systems decide who gets remembered. York’s competence was documented in expedition journals, recorded in government ledgers, acknowledged by every person who traveled alongside him, and then buried for two centuries. Glover’s flight shifts those systems, slightly, in a direction that finally acknowledges what York demonstrated on the banks of the Columbia River and in the snow of the Bitterroot Mountains: that Black explorers have always been there, even when the country chose not to see them.

The Moon does not care who orbits it. But humans care deeply about who gets to say they did. York never got to say it. Glover did.

Photo by Ylanite Koppens on Pexels

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