Eisenhower signs the proclamation: Hawaii is now the 50th state
Forty years after Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole first introduced a statehood bill in Congress, the question finally reached Hawaii's own voters. They answered the ballot question, "Shall Hawaii immediately be admitted into the Union as a state?", with 94 percent in favor. On August 21, 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the proclamation making it official. The islands became the 50th state, and the anniversary is now marked each year as Statehood Day.
Hawaii's admission forced the flag itself to change, adding a 50th star to a field that had held 49 for less than a year. It also settled, after four decades of stalled bills, whether a Pacific territory annexed in 1898 belonged inside the Union rather than outside it. The vote (94 percent yes) remains one of the most lopsided statehood referendums in American history.
QHow many times did Hawaii statehood bills die in Congress before one finally passed?
Congress saw Hawaii statehood bills come and go for four decades before the Hawaii Admission Act cleared in 1959. Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole introduced the first one in 1919, and it stalled. Lawmakers tried again in 1935, again in 1947, and again in 1950, and each attempt failed to reach the finish line. It took roughly forty years and four failed legislative pushes before the fifth attempt, the 1959 Admission Act, finally succeeded. Few states have had to wait through that many failed bills before Congress said yes.
QWho introduced the very first Hawaii statehood bill, and what was his role?
The first push came from Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole, a member of the Hawaiian royal line who served as the territory's delegate to the U.S. Congress. In 1919, decades before statehood was seriously considered by most of Washington, he introduced the first bill proposing Hawaii join the Union. He would not live to see it succeed, since admission did not arrive until 1959, four decades and several failed bills later. His name is still attached to the holiday Hawaii observes each March, Prince Kūhiō Day, distinct from the August Statehood Day that marks Eisenhower's proclamation.
QWhat changed on the American flag within a year of Hawaii joining the Union?
The flag gained a 50th star, but that star sat on a field that had only just been redesigned for Alaska's admission seven months earlier. Alaska became the 49th state in January 1959, forcing a new 49-star flag, which then had to be redrawn again by August for Hawaii's addition, an unusually rapid double revision in the flag's history. The back-to-back changes meant the 49-star flag holds the record for the shortest-lived official U.S. flag design, in official use for less than a year before the 50-star version replaced it and has remained unchanged ever since.
