Hawaii was an independent kingdom until the draw of sugar industry profits and rising political instability led the United States to annex it as an American territory. In 1898, the Hawaiian flag was lowered at Iolani Palace in Honolulu and the U.S. flag was raised in its place. Hawaii officially became a U.S. territory in 1900. In 1912, with the addition of New Mexico and Arizona as states, the U.S. flag had 48 stars, organized into six rows of eight stars. In the years afterward, as Hawaiians advocated for statehood, the idea of the 49-star flag took on aspirational significance. To Hawaii’s Delegates, a 49th star on the flag would mean that Hawaii had achieved statehood.
Nine years later, in 1935, Delegate King showed off an unofficial 49-star flag. At the time, King had been advocating for Hawaiian statehood, but to no avail. The flag was created by four young Hawaiian women of different ethnic backgrounds: Tamar Kahalelehua, Philomena Cabral, Rose Lam, and Constance Morrell. Newspapers chuckled over the idea of “island Betsy Rosses,” as the Los Angeles Times put it. The Washington Post wrote: “‘Tamar Kahalelehua’ doesn’t sound much like ‘Betsy Ross,’ we’ll admit, but [she] is performing much the same function that Betsy did long ago.” King used the flag as a visual prop accompanying his 1935 petition for statehood, showing how easily and neatly Hawaii’s star could fit into the nation’s symbol.
World War II had changed the political landscape, because the attack on Pearl Harbor reverberated as an attack on the United States. Hawaiian statehood again moved forward in Congress. But to keep political balance in the Senate, statehood for Hawaii, which typically voted Republican, was linked to statehood for Alaska, which leaned Democratic. Democratic Senators, including Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, did not want to lose the party’s majority. King’s and Farrington’s flags ended up incorrectly predicting history—Hawaii did not become the 49th state. There was a 49-star flag, briefly, but the 49th star signified Alaska, not Hawaii. Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959, just months before Hawaii.
The dates of statehood threw flag makers into a quandary. After Alaska entered the Union, the industry created a swath of 49-star flags. According to the 1818 Act to Establish the Flag of the United States, a new state’s star must be added to the U.S. flag on the next July 4th. If both Alaska and Hawaii achieved statehood before July 4, the 49-star flags would be outdated before they were even sold. Flag makers fretted that their companies would be ruined if Hawaii achieved statehood too soon.
In the end, Hawaii was admitted as a state on August 21, 1959. The official 49-star flag appeared for only one year, from July 4, 1959, to July 4, 1960, when Hawaii’s star finally took its place on Old Glory.
Sources: Los Angeles Times, June 9, 1935; Baltimore Sun, February 9, 1936; Washington Post, March 28, 1953; Wall Street Journal, March 13, 1959; Atlanta Constitution, July 2, 1959; Act of April 4, 1818, ch. 34, 3 Stat. 415; and Ben Reed Zaricor, “Whose Flag Is It, Anyway?” The American Flag: Two Centuries of Concord & Conflict, ed. Howard Michael Madaus and Whitney Smith (Santa Cruz, C.A.: VZ Publications, 2006).
This is part of a series of blog posts exploring the art and history of photographs from the House Collection.
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