Photographs of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. adorned with flower lei from Hawaii residents who traveled to Selma, Alabama, to join him on a pivotal Civil Rights march are now on public display in the state Capitol in Honolulu.
Hawaii’s Role in the Civil Rights Movement
A delegation of four people brought 48 flower lei with them from Hawaii to Alabama in 1965. Images of King wearing lei have been previously published, but most of the photos displayed in Hawaii’s new exhibit have never been seen before.
The exhibit comes at the end of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2026 term, which included a ruling gutting the remaining piece of the Voting Rights Act. The photos were taken by Civil Rights photographer Matt Herron, whose widow donated them to Hawaii’s Department of Accounting and General Services for the state’s archives.
One of the lei-bearers was Charles Campbell, a high school teacher and chairman of the Hawaii Civil Rights Conference. The exhibit is a reminder that people from the Aloha State participated in an important event in history, said Keith Regan, who oversees the department as the state’s comptroller.
Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.
