Take a rare look at black history in the Pacific. African Americans were missionaries, teachers, cowboys, and more long before Hawaii became a state.
When we think of African-American history, it is usually within the geographic regions of America’s contiguous states. With an African-American population hovering at only about 3 percent of the total, it is easy to overlook the important contributions of blacks in Hawaii.
For those on the Mainland, this is probably more difficult to consider because Hawaii is a latecomer—it became our 50th state in 1959—and has an “exotic” image in a remote location. Over the past few years, with the rise to prominence of Honolulu-born Barack Obama, there is more interest in this state’s African-Americans.
Fortunately, the University of Hawai’i Press has published two books to remedy this lack of generally available material on the state’s black history: They Followed the Trade Winds: African Americans in Hawai’i guest edited by Miles M. Jackson and The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas after the Civil War by Gerald Horne. (There will be an interview with Gerald Horne in another article.) Miles M. Jackson taught at the University of Hawai’i and also wrote And They Came: A Brief History and Annotated Bibliography of Blacks in Hawai’i.
They Followed the Trade Winds is volume 43 in the Social Process in Hawai’i series. The articles range in topics from the historical “The African Diaspora in Nineteenth-Century Hawai’i by Kathryn Waddell Takara to the contemporary “Striving Towards Community” by Miles M. Jackson. They are presented with solid, academic research but are quite accessible to most interested readers.
There are fascinating stories of some of the early African Americans who had the courage and foresight to leave their homes on the Mainland to help create new lives for themselves and others. Some stayed, others did not but they all left their mark.
Take, for instance, the amazing story of Anthony D. Allen—a black man who, escaping from slavery in 1800, traveled around the world from Schenectady, New York to Hawaii. He prospered there and was host to missionaries on the island of Oahu, near Waikiki.
Carlotta Stewart Lai went to Hawaii with her family in 1898. Her father, T. McCants Stewart, believed that Hawaii offered opportunities for blacks that the Mainland did not. Eventually her family left the islands, but Carlotta stayed to become a teacher and later a school principal—remarkable for an African-American woman at that time.
Whaling ships brought men of African descent—in particular, Cape Verdeans—to the multicultural Hawaiian islands. After World War II, the fact that more African-American military personnel were based there, encouraged more to stay after their tours of duty.
Although those African Americans who stayed early on very often had more opportunities than they would had they lived on the Mainland, this does not mean that racism from the Mainland was absent. It was used by the large agricultural and other companies to keep the various ethnic groups—native Hawaiians, Japanese, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, and others—from bonding in coalitions against some unfortunate labor practices. However, They Followed the Trade Winds is well worth reading to understand the achievements, even with those issues, of African Americans in Hawaii.
