THE COURAGE TO SPEAK: Disrupting Haole Hegemony at the 1937 Congressional Statehood Hearings

The son of propagandist Lorrin A. Thurston, Lorrin P. Thurston, replaced his father as editor of the self-advertised “family paper,” the Honolulu Advertiser, after the senior Thurston died in 1931. Nine years later, in 1940, Lorrin P. Thurston wrote an editorial seeking a vote on Hawai‘i statehood that also aimed to resolve the “great problem” his father’s actions had helped to create. In a confessional tone, Lorrin P. Thurston shares information known about his father’s involvement in the overthrow and alleged annexation of the Hawaiian Kingdom: The question in my mind and many others is, “Shall Hawaii have statehood?” Many