Hawaii exhibit spotlights state’s role in Selma marches, King’s lei photos
King’s flower lei photos went on display in Honolulu, recasting Selma as a story with a Pacific partner: a four-person Hawaii delegation that brought 48 leis in 1965.
Photographs of Martin Luther King Jr. wearing flower lei from Hawaii went on public display Tuesday at the Hawaii State Capitol in Honolulu, putting the state’s connection to Selma and the voting-rights struggle in plain view. The exhibit showed some of the images publicly for the first time and returned a little-known chapter of civil-rights history to the center of Hawaii’s own public memory.
The display traces that link back to March 1965, when the Selma-to-Montgomery march ran 54 miles over five days, from March 21 to March 25, before King led thousands to the Alabama state capitol. Alongside photographs from the march, the exhibit highlights a four-person Hawaii delegation that brought 48 flower leis to Alabama, a symbolic gesture later linked to Reverend Abraham Akaka, who helped organize the tribute as a sign of solidarity.
The opening drew visitors including Pamela MacDonald and Rev. George Scott, and local coverage identified one of the Hawaii march participants as Nona Springel Ferdon. Steven Springel was shown at the exhibit holding a photograph of his mother, a detail that underscored how the story moved from national history into family memory.
The images come from the Matt Herron photography archive at Stanford University Libraries, a collection that spans Herron’s work from the 1950s through the 1990s and includes prints, negatives and contact sheets tied to his civil-rights coverage. Jeannine Herron, the photographer’s widow, is also donating nearly 30 prints to the Hawaii State Archives division of the Department of Accounting and General Services, extending the life of the collection beyond the exhibit floor.
The Selma marches helped galvanize passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by challenging the poll taxes and other discriminatory barriers that had long suppressed Black voters in the South. By foregrounding Hawaii’s leis, the Honolulu exhibit broadens the familiar mainland narrative and shows how support for the movement reached well beyond the Deep South.
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