Once in the Elks Club in Honolulu, an elderly man of Chinese ancestry said in a low voice to me: “This club used to be very exclusive. And the one next door too.” He meant no Chinese were admitted — or anyone but haoles (whites) or ethnic Hawaiians — to the Elks or the Outrigger Canoe Club. This was true of nearly all of Hawaii's posh clubs. “But all that changed,” his daughter said, “when Reverend King marched on Selma.”
So Hawaii's statehood was not an occasion for the opening of clubs to other races or even an era of good feeling. That had to wait for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The eight main islands and many smaller islands and atolls that make up the archipelago we know as Hawaii became the 50th state 50 years ago today, but it was still old-fashioned in every sense, an island chain of pineapple and sugar plantations, with a scattering of good hotels, visited by a quarter of a million tourists — mainly from ships and, in that year of 1959, the first big jets.
Back then, as the newest star on the flag, Hawaii was a thinly populated place, with most of the people living in Honolulu and predominantly young — the state's average age was among the youngest in the nation. Its soul was Polynesian, but its popular culture and its institutions were Small Town U.S.A., with drive-in eateries, carhops and a passion for Elvis (a frequent visitor) and for high school sports; on every island the social highlight of the year was the senior prom.
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