A Dishonorable Killing
Joe Kahahawai has been called Hawaii’s Emmett Till. But unlike Till, Kahahawai’s death more than 70 years ago has never made the history books.
By Lydia Lum
The brutal slaying in 1955 of Emmett Till by at least two White Southerners shocked and outraged the country. Published photos of the Black teenager’s mutilated body on the covers of Jet and The Chicago Defender galvanized the civil rights movement, especially in the South.
A sadly similar crime in Hawaii 23 years earlier also led residents of that state to unite and demand social change. Like Till, 22-year-old Joe Kahahawai was murdered by angry Whites. But there is at least one stark difference between the two cases. Till’s story has been seared into the American consciousness. It is recorded in the history books.
Kahahawai’s story, meanwhile, is almost universally absent from textbooks in this country. His name isn’t even familiar to most history faculty outside Hawaii, much less to the general public.
