Captain Wilcox honoured
p. 24 · Read in the full issue
HISTORY’S most controversial Ha waiian finally received received his due on September 11, amidst much fanfare in downtown Honolulu. Mayor Frank Fasi unveiled a statue of Captain Robert Wilcox, the Polynesian Che Guevara, Captain Wilcox twice led armed upris ings to defend Hawaiian sovereignty against the haole business elite. On July 30, 1889, Wilcox’s armed “Redshirts” occupied the lolani Palace grounds in Honolulu. The goal of “the Roaring Lion of the Pacific” was to reverse 1887’s emasculating “Bayonet Constitution,” which the planterocracy had forced on King Kialakaua in order to disenfranchise the Hawaiians. Finance Minister S M Damon, son of a mission ary, asked the US minister to land troops from the USS Adams. Seven revolutionaries died in the fighting, 12 were wounded, and 60 were imprisoned - but a Hawaiian jury of Wilcox’s peers refused to convict him.
In 1859, Captain Wilcox rose again, in an effort to restore Queen Liliuokalani to the throne she’d lost two years earlier
when the Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown. The Republic of Hawaii was tipped off to the impending counter revolution, and President Sanford Dole declared martial law on January 7.
There were battles near Diamond Head, etc.; the guerillas went underground.
Captain Wilcox was the last rebel captured when he surrended January 20.
What Wilcox failed to achieve with bullets, he partially gained with ballots.
In 1890, Wilcox’s forces united with working class whites. Their National Reform Party won half of the legis lature’s seats, weaking the Bayonet Constitution. After Hawaii was annexed by the US, Wilcox became the first Polynesian (long before Eni Hunkin) j elected to the US Congress. There, he won back Hawaiians’ right to vote.
Born Feb. 5, 1855 at Maui, Wilcox was descended from Hawaiian royalty. King Kalakaua sent him to study warfare at the Royal Military Academy at Turin, Italy, in the 1880 s. Wilcox died Oct. 23, 1903 - many, like greatgranddaughter Owana Salazar, acting High Chief of the sovereignty group Ka LaHui Hawaii (the Sovereign Hawaiian Nation) and singer - claim political opponents as sassinated Wilcox by putting ground glass in his beer. D
Ed Rampell Wilcox unbound: the Wilcox statue