Hawaiian or part Hawaiian. There were Filipinos, Koreans, Chinese, and nearly 13,000 âother,â though less than one-tenth of one percent of the population was classified as Negro. The place prided itself on tolerance. Despite the occasional real estate listing insisting on âno haoles,â or white people, or calls for âAmericans of Japanese ancestry only,â residents saw Hawaii as a laboratory for assimilation and a model of harmonious coexistence. Steeped in its vision of pluralism, the state seemed poised at a moment of infinite possibility.
Hawaii was on the verge of economic liftoff, too. Jet travel had sliced hours off the time required to cross the Pacific. Visitor expenditures had risen fivefold between 1950 and 1960, outstripping the value of sugar and pineapple production for the first time. The total value of mortgages had quadrupled, and bank branches had more than doubled in number. By 1967, Honolulu would rank fifth in the country in the value of building permits issued, trailing only New York, Los Angeles, Houston, and Chicago. Paradise of the Pacific âa glossy magazine featuring articles on outrigger canoe racing, the muumuu, and Duke Kahanamoku, the Olympic swimming champion who popularized surfingâwas thick with ads for real estate companies, banks, moving and storage services, decorators, flooring. For a footsore furniture salesman with an industrious banker wife and a college-age daughter, Hawaii had promise. With tuition at the University of Hawaiâi at eighty-five dollars per semester, enrollment in the fall of 1960 jumped by thirteen percent. For the first time, the number of incoming freshman topped two thousand, Stanley Ann Dunham among them. Arriving on campus in September 1960, she swiftly jettisoned her first name. From then on, Stanley was Ann.
At first glance, the University of Hawaiâi in 1960 might have seemed an unlikely fit for a brainy nonconformist with a wry sense of humor and a taste for cool jazz. It was a quiet provincial land-grant college nestled in the tropical lushness of the MÄnoa Valley, east of downtown Honolulu and at the base of the Koâolau Range. The valley was known for its rainbows, produced when the trade winds coming across the windward shore of Oâahu hit the mountains, sprinkling the valley on the far side in showers. The student newspaper, Ka Leo O Hawaiâi, occupied itself with documenting every beauty contest, sorority pledge week, and race for homecoming queen. Its monthly calendar featured a spread of a comely coed, dressed in something tropical but demure. (âA water sports enthusiast, she likes swimming, surfing and water skiing. Another one of her interests is that of hula dancing.â) In the home economics department, the course offerings included âAesthetics of Clothing and Personal Appearance.â The annual, student-sponsored Ka Palapala Beauty Pageant of Nations, with its bathing-suit rally and formal-dress competition, selected seven finalists, one for each of seven ethnic groups. âThe University of Hawaiâi used to be a good party school,â Pake Zane, a Chinese-American born on Maui and an undergraduate in the late 1950s, told me. âWe had our share of demonstrations, but it was basically much more conservative. People would say, âDonât go make trouble.â Itâs a kind of Oriental attitudeâthat you donât want to bring shame on your family.â There were exceptions to that rule, of course. When James Meredith was barred from entering the University of Mississippi in September 1962 on the basis of his race, five hundred students and faculty members on the MÄnoa campus held a rally to protest his treatment, and the political-affairs club fired off a resolution to the University of Mississippi. âWe, students in the newest state of the Unionâa state dedicated to the principle of racial equalityâare distressed by the
Maggie Brendan
Barbara O'Connor
Jan Washburn
Terri Blackstock
Norah Simone
Barry Kemp
G.P. Taylor
Alan Cumyn
Linda Barnes
Lisa Jackson