REMEMBERING MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

JANUARY 17, 2022

More than 50 years ago, the Hawaiian lei made a surprise appearance during Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic Selma to Montgomery marches at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. To give and wear a lei is a Hawaiian emblem and gesture of love. And, during the third and final march that started on March 21, 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights protesters were seen leading the crowd of thousands adorned in flower lei.

The garlands were initially organized to be sent to King as a symbolic action of support and solidarity by Reverend Abraham Akaka, the older brother of U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka and then-reverend of Kawaiahao Church, a realization first reported by the seminal black digest Jet Magazine in 1991.

The two reverends had developed a friendship over the years bound by their belief in nonviolence and social justice. King found the Islands’ multiethnic population and everyday society to be an inspirational source of “racial harmony” as the struggle of African Americans made headlines across the continental U.S.

Excerpted from Hawaii Magazine, Jan. 20, 2016