Photographs of Martin Luther King Jr. Wearing Hawaiian Lei Go on Display in Honolulu Capitol

Photographs of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wearing flower lei from Hawaii went on public display Tuesday in the state Capitol in Honolulu. The exhibit opened June 30 and continues through July 7.

The images were taken by Civil Rights photographer Matt Herron after state troopers attacked marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on March 7, 1965. A delegation of four people brought 48 lei from Hawaii to Alabama that month, according to a March 20, 1965, article in The Honolulu Advertiser.

Herron's widow donated the photographs to Hawaii's Department of Accounting and General Services for the state archives.

Steven Springel viewed a photograph of his mother, Nona Ferdon, at the opening. Ferdon, a divorced mother of two and graduate student, traveled to Selma when Springel was about to turn 7. She died in 2021.

Keith Regan, the state comptroller, presided over the unveiling as acting governor while Gov. Josh Green was out of state. The exhibit forms part of Hawaii's programming to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States.

Mothers of Kawaiahaʻo Church in Honolulu made the lei from plumeria grown on church grounds. Tomi Knaefler, 96, who traveled with the 1965 delegation as a reporter, had planned to attend the news conference but did not. The display opened at the end of the U.S.

Supreme Court's 2026 term, which included a ruling that removed the remaining piece of the Voting Rights Act.