I can’t tell you why there are Interstate Highways in Hawaii but I can tell you that, as today #stampoftheday shows, Hawaii became the nation’s 50th state on August 21, 1959. I can also tell you that the path Hawaii took to statehood was both tortured and, in many respects, embodies some of the worst of America – racism, excessive corporate power, and unconstitutional efforts to stymie political protests. And yet, its history also has some moments that underscore some of the best of America, particularly our ability to sometimes change our minds and even to acknowledge our excesses and mistakes.

I don’t have the space or the knowledge to tell the full tale but suffice to say that the Kingdom of Hawai?i was a sovereign nation from 1810 until 1893 when the monarchy was overthrown by American and European immigrants, with help from the U.S. Marines. Many of these rebels were connected to five major firms that dominated the island’s growing sugar industry, which was tightly controlled by descendants of missionary families and other white businessmen. These firms and the people behind them also gained control over other aspects of the Hawaiian economy including banking, warehousing, shipping, and importing. This allowed them to both pay low wages and to make employees dependent on goods and services they had to buy from the plantation owners.

These “revolutionaries” established the Republic of Hawaii, but their ultimate goal was the annexation of the islands to the United States, which occurred in 1898. Being a US territory greatly benefitted the sugar growers because they were no longer subject to high tariffs. Moreover, their connections with the federal government helped ensure a business-friendly regime because the island’s governors were appointed by the president, subject to Senate approval.

Since there weren’t enough native workers to keep up with the growth in sugar as well as the pineapple plantations that sprang up in the early 1900s, growers began importing laborers from many places, including China, Korea, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. Plantation owners worked hard to maintain a hierarchical caste system that prevented worker organization, and divided the camps based on ethnic identity.

By the early 1950s, there was growing resistance to this system from a variety of entities including an increasingly vigorous Democratic Party, the leftist International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and the Communist Party of Hawaii. In 1951 these efforts led the FBI to arrest seven individuals who were charged with – and convicted of – violating the Smith Act, a 1940 federal law setting criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government by force or violence. Over 200 people – including the Hawaii 7 – were convicted under that law’s provisions before the U.S. Supreme Court found that many of its provisions were unconstitutional in a series of decisions issued in 1957.

Despite the arrests, resistance continued to grow, culminating in the Hawaii Democratic Revolution of 1954, a nonviolent resistance movement consisting of general strikes, protests, and other acts of civil disobedience. And in the territorial elections of 1954, the long reign of the Hawaii Republican Party in the legislature came to an abrupt end, as they were voted out of the office to be replaced by members of the Democratic Party of Hawaii.

The Democrats picked up the call to make Hawaii a state, which had first been proposed in Congress in 1919. That bill was ignored, and proposals for Hawaii statehood were forgotten during the 1920s because the archipelago’s rulers believed that sugar planters’ interests would be better served if Hawaii remained a territory. Another statehood bill was introduced in 1935 but never came to vote largely because the Southern Democrats who chaired all the key committees, were unwilling to accept a measure that would lead to non-white members of Congress. In 1940 advocates resurrected the idea by placing the statehood question on the ballot. Two-thirds of the electorate in the territory voted in favor of joining the Union. After World War II, the call for statehood was repeated with even larger support.

The call was picked up by Democrat John A. Burns, a former officer of the Honolulu Police Department, who in 1956 was elected Hawaii’s non-voting delegate to Congress in 1956 primarily with support from non-whites in Hawaii. His election proved pivotal to the statehood movement. Upon arriving in Washington, D.C., Burns began making key political maneuvers by winning over allies among Congressional leaders and state governors. His most important accomplishment was convincing Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Texas) that Hawaii was ready to become a state, despite the continuing opposition of other leading southern Senators, such as James Eastland and John Sparkman. Finally a deal was brokered to accept both Alaska and Hawaii as states, a package made palatable by the fact key Democrats and Republicans believed that Alaska was likely to vote for Democrats while Hawaii was likely to return to its Republican roots. Of courses, the exact opposite occurred.

In March 1959, both houses of Congress passed the Hawaii Admission Act and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed it into law. On June 27, 1959, a plebiscite was held asking Hawaii residents to vote on accepting the statehood bill. It passed overwhelmingly, with 94 percent voting in favor. On August 21, church bells throughout Honolulu were rung upon the proclamation that Hawaii was finally a US state.

And in 1993, on the 100th anniversary of the monarchy’s overthrow, Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, an official apology stating that the U.S. government “acknowledges that the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States and further acknowledges that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands, either through the Kingdom of Hawaii or through a plebiscite or referendum.” And it also worth noting that despite statehood and the formal apology, today there a grassroots political and cultural campaign to establish an autonomous or independent nation or kingdom for Hawaiians of whole or part Native Hawaiian ancestry.

So the stamp celebrating Hawaii’s statehood, also highlights a sorry tale of how white businessmen – many of them connected to missionaries who supposedly were bringing religion that would “civilize” heathens—conspired to overthrow a sovereign government and then imposed a repressive economic and political system on the islands for over 50 years. But the stamp also highlights a more optimistic story about how that system was unable to stop a popular uprising, and produced a leader who was able to overcome racist southern Senator’s longstanding ability to block efforts to make Hawaii a state. And while the apology resolution didn’t do anything substantive, I still find it powerful that our system does provide a way for us to acknowledge our mistakes. As Joe Biden recalled last night: “Ella Baker, a giant of the civil rights movement, left us with this wisdom: Give people light and they will find a way.”

Be well, stay safe, “give people light,” fight for justice and work for peace.