When I was little and my family from Hawaii would come to the Mainland during the Summer I used to notice that if it was the 4th of July they used to stand there in a sea of American Flags and oceans of Potato Salad and look…just a little grim, maybe a little quiet and at one point someone would take me aside and tell me the story about Queen Lili’uokalani.

My Filipino Grandfather who always smiled and was a gifted and lively story teller was not so animated when he told me how The Queen was put in chains and imprisoned in her own home and I used to wonder, as he told me the story, what the Queen of England or the President of The United States being put in chains and forced to live in the basement of their homes would look like and I couldn’t see it.

When I was a kid I learned from my Grandfather ( because I sure as Hell never learned about it at school )  that  unlike the ” Declaration of Independence ”  the Queen signed a document that dissolved Hawaii’s Independence. Our 50th State – how ironic- actually LOST its Independence when it was annexed by the U.S. Governement.

I wonder if they took the cuffs off when she signed.

They may have…. but they were there all the same weren’t they?

Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii signed a document which read in part: “Now to avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life, I do this under protest and impelled by said force yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representatives and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the Constitutional Sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands. – Queen Lili’uokalani to Sanford B. Dole, Jan 17, 1893.”

Hawaii was annexed  ( not admitted, not ‘became’ a state- amm )to the United States through a joint resolution of the U.S. Congress, signed into law by President McKinley on July 17, 1898.