Social Movement in Hawaiʻi

This collection hosts documents, photos, and other publications related to various social movements in Hawai’i archived in the Department of Ethnic Studies since the 60s. In Hawaiʻi, the ten years following statehood (1959) was a time of unprecedented capital investment in tourist resorts and suburban subdivisions as agribusiness phased out of Hawaiʻi. The prosperity of this development boom was differentiated by class, race, ethnicity and gender. Each new proposed development threatened mass evictions giving rise to social movements to protect a way of life, homes, farms and families. At the center of most of these movements were the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of Ethnic Studies faculty and students. They produced flyers, newsletters, reports, testimonies and attracted extensive news coverage. Ethnic Studies Professor Marion Kelly and husband John Kelly created and collected a significant number of these publications. The Department of Ethnic Studies archived these documents in the Ah Quon McElrath Community Room. In Summer 2021, funded by a grant from the Hawaiʻi Council for the Humanities, through support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and with the guidance of the UHM Hamilton Library Hawaiian Collection, these documents were digitized and can now be accessed through this digital collection. For background details, browse the Social Movement in Hawaiʻi archive at ScholarSpace, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.