Charles Crenchaw, the First African American on the Summit of Denali

Charles Madison Crenchaw is barely known in the history of mountaineering. Little is known about his early life, but one thing is clear: he loved to climb. In 1964 he became the first African American to reach the summit of Mount McKinley, the peak now called Denali, the same year President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a turning point in the fight against legal segregation.

Airman, engineer, climber

Crenchaw served as a flight engineer with the Tuskegee Airmen, the segregated unit of the U.S. military made up mostly of African American pilots, airmen and support staff who served in World War II. After the war he used the GI Bill to go to Morehouse College and then to the University of Chicago, where he earned a doctorate in engineering.

He settled in the Pacific Northwest and went to work at Boeing, in quality control for the Apollo program. Surrounded by high peaks, he took up climbing in earnest. He joined the Seattle Mountaineers by 1961 and soon made a name for himself on some of North America's great mountains, including Mount Rainier and Mount Baker.

Mount McKinley

In 1963 Al Randell invited him to join an expedition to Mount McKinley. With 15 climbers, it was one of the largest private groups ever to attempt the peak. The team faced the usual hardships of high-altitude climbing — violent weather and the difficulty of feeding a large party — but kept going, and in 1964 most of the climbers reached the summit. Among the honors recorded was a quiet line noting that Crenchaw was the first Black man to climb Mount McKinley.

A life with open questions

The National Park Service notes that Crenchaw's story complicates the image of African Americans most often told about the civil rights era. He was neither an activist nor cast as a victim; he moved through a complicated social world and often had privileges many Black Americans of his time did not, making a distinctive place for himself at work and in his personal life. How he dealt with systemic racism, what drove him, and how other African Americans saw him remain open questions. His story raises questions about race, identity and achievement that may never be fully answered.

Sources

• National Park Service, Denali National Park and Preserve: "Charles Crenchaw: An American Mountaineer." The source gives the date of the summit both as July 9, 1964, and as June 9, 1964, so neither date is given here. Its portrait of Crenchaw, a 2020 painting commissioned from Lamont Joseph White by the Joy Trip Project, is not reproduced.