Martin Luther King, Hawaiian Leis And The Power Of Aloha In Selma
In Alabama on March 21, 1965, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis and other civil rights demonstrators made their historic march from Selma to Montgomery. Photos taken of the march show King and others wearing Hawaiian flower leis.
But why leis at a civil rights march in the Deep South? King had a deep connection with the people of Hawaii.
“As I looked at all of these various faces and various colors mingled together like the waters of the sea, I could see only one face -- the face of the future,” King said on a trip to the islands in 1959.
In 1964, King had gave a lecture in Hawaii where he met Rev. Abraham Akaka, a Hawaiian/Chinese pastor at the Kawaiahaʻo Church in Honolulu, as well as the chairman of the Hawaii Advisory Committee of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Being heads of their respective parishes (Akaka gave his sermons in both Hawaiian and English and also offered blessings at a number of surf events in Hawaii at the time), the two men formed a relationship and over the next year stayed in contact.
It was Rev. Akaka that sent King and his followers the flower leis in an expression of the aloha spirit. In Hawaiian culture “aloha” represents love, compassion, mercy, peace, kindness, and even gratitude.
For the demonstrators, the flowers provided a stark contrast to the weight of the moment and served as a symbolic connection of the civil rights struggle around the U.S. The day would come to be known as “Bloody Sunday” as demonstrators were brutalized trying to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
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With more than 25 years of writing about surfing, the ocean and action sports, Jake Howard continues to share stories, profiles and issues that shape the surfing world. One of the premier subject-matter experts in the field today, he's savvy in the ways of print, digital and social media, his breadth of work is expansive. Getting his start writing Surfline surf reports and recording the phone reports for 976-SURF in the late '90s, Jake served as the managing editor for Surfer Magazine in the early 2000s before moving on to launch RedBullSurfing.com and cover surfing for ESPN and the X Games. Over the years, Jake has also enjoyed time behind the edit desk at The Surfer's Journal, as well as the World Surf League, where he worked as the Senior Editor for a number of years. Beyond producing editorial content, Jake has served as a digital marketer and copywriter for iconic surf brands such as Quiksilver, Roxy and Rip Curl. Writing thousands of pages of copy for Surfline, he has deep SEO experience as well. The surf columnist for the San Clemente Times, Jake continues to dedicate himself to the culture and history of the sport through his involvement with the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center in San Clemente.