Question

What issues were raised by students of Japanese descent in Hawaii?

1. Describe the development of black schools in the south after the Civil War?

4. If Mexicans were “white”, how was segregation achieved in schools by the Anglos running the govt?

Answer 1

An investigation by the Cleveland administration. Hawai’i became a U.S. protectorate while an investigation was done by U.S. President Grover Cleveland at the written request of Queen Lili'uokalani. Cleveland and his administration concluded that the overthrow had been illegal (“a grievous wrong has been done.”) He then turned the issue over to Congress where it languished while the “straw government” in Hawai’i, who now had Sanford Dole as its President, continued to gain a stronger hold over the islands.
Native Hawaiians also launched a petition. Meanwhile, Native Hawaiians launched a massive petition drive to stop the formal annexation of Hawai’i to the U.S. They thought that if Congress realized that Native Hawaiians did not want to be part of the U.S., they would restore independence to Hawai’i. Public meetings were held on the five major islands. Of the known population of 39,000 Native Hawaiians, 21,269 signed the petition. This is an incredible majority, since many of the remaining were children.
Petitioning all the way to Washington D.C. Queen Lili'uokalani traveled to Washington D.C. to present her protest and the petition to Congress. At the time, a trip of this distance took months by sea and land. All to no avail. Congress had not acted on President Cleveland’s request and a new Congress came in with the administration of President William McKinley. By that time, the Spanish American War was brewing and the U.S. didn’t want to give up Hawai’i’s prime location in the Pacific.
An illegal annexation. Hawai’i was then illegally annexed as a U.S. territory in 1898, along with 1.2 million acres of Hawaiian crown lands that had belonged to the monarchy and to the nation of Hawai’i. No compensation was paid to anyone.

The Hawaiian Language Was Banned After the Overthrow

Soon after the overthrow, a law was passed to make it illegal to teach in the schools in anything but the English language. English replaced Hawaiian as the official language of government, business and education.

So began the colonization of the Native Hawaiian people—children were punished in school for speaking Hawaiian and those who spoke Hawaiian in the home were looked down on. This systematic oppression of the culture and language took place for decades, and the language was almost lost due to parents and grandparents who were uncomfortable passing the language on to younger generations.

It was not until a constitutional amendment passed in Hawaiʻi in 1978 (almost a hundred years later!) that it was once again legal to teach Hawaiian in the school system.