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Abstract
Although seldom the subject of systematic analysis, congressional deliberations about granting statehood to Alaska and Hawaii constituted one of the definitive legislative disputes of the immediate post–World War II era, engaging partisan and ideological cleavages, the divisive racial/sectional politics of the time, the “Red Scare,” economic interests, and institutional differences between the House and Senate. Although by the mid-1940s strong support for statehood existed among the public and within most of the advocacy community, admission did not occur until the waning days of the Eisenhower administration, nearly 15 years later. This article clarifies the factors associated with the impasse, including changes that occurred over the 1940s and 1950s, continuities with earlier episodes of national expansion, and the implications for current discussions about statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Acknowledgments
For helpful comments, my thanks to Ruth Bloch Rubin, Daniel Carpenter, and three anonymous referees.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 “Cotton Speaks Against D.C. Statehood,” June 25, 2020, https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-speaks-against-dc-statehood.
2 Ibid. See also Santiago, Kustov, and Valenzuela (Citation2023).
3 Consult especially Maass (Citation2020) on initial decisions to annex Hawaii and purchase Alaska.
4 Justin McCarthy, “American’s Support for Hawaii’s Statehood,” Gallup Vault, August 16, 2019. https://news.gallup.com/vault/263240/gallup-vault-americans-support-hawaii-statehood.aspx
5 1950 Census of Population, Vol. 1, Number of Inhabitants. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1950/population-volume-2/41601749v2p51-54ch3.pdf.
6 Ivan Petroff, Special Agent, “Report to the U.S. Census on Populations, Industries, and Resources of Alaska,” August 7, 1882. https://live.laborstats.alaska.gov/cen/histpdfs/1880Census.pdf
7 Thirteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1910: Statistics for Alaska. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1913. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1910/abstract/supplement-ak.pdf.
8 For details about congressional actions on statehood, 1946–1959, I draw on relevant entries in Congressional Quarterly Almanac, a wide range of contemporaneous media accounts, and Bell (Citation1984). Where appropriate, I also draw on archival materials from the congressional papers of Carl Albert, University of Oklahoma; the papers of Thomas Hale Boggs, Tulane University; and the Lyndon Johnson Senatorial collection, archived at the LBJ Center, Austin, Texas.
9 Since probit coefficients are difficult to interpret, substantively, report marginal effects as estimated by the “margins” command in Stata, and thus capture probability changes resulting from a shift in the relevant independent variable from zero to one, holding other explanatory factors at their means. To facilitate comparisons across models, all continuous variables were rescaled to have a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. For the continuous independent variables, then, the coefficients reported in capture the predicted change in the probability of a pro-statehood vote if the relevant factor is increased from its mean to a level one standard deviation above that mean.
10 If instances where one of the few independents can be meaningfully associated with one of the major parties, they are recoded in that manner.
11 The conviction was later overturned. For background on Hawaii politics during the period, consult Miller-Davenport (Citation2019).
12 NOMINATE and other roll call data are downloaded from voteview.com.
13 Statehood for Hawaii Hearings, 83rd Cong., 1st and 2nd sess., 1953–1954, p. 402.
14 Constituency indicators mostly were provided by E. Scott Adler. For details, consult “The Congressional District Data Codebook,” E. Scott Adler, Department of Political Science, University of Colorado. Supplementary urbanization data for states were secured from the 1950 Census. The Census adopted a different measure of “urban” that year, so for consistency the 1950 percentages are used for all the Senate regressions in .
15 More generally, consult Plummer (Citation1996) about the attitudes of Black Americans on matters touching on U.S. foreign policy.
16 For additional detail, consult Bell (Citation1984).
17 Legislative Series, Box 26, Folder 45, Carl Albert Congressional Collection, The Carl Albert Center, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma.
18 Whip count results reported here are from Evans, C. Lawrence, Congressional Whip Count Database, William & Mary, January 2012.
19 See note 17.
20 “Congress Approves Civil Rights Act of 1957.” In CQ Almanac 1957, 13th ed., 07-553-07-569. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1958. http://library.cqpress.com.proxy.wm.edu/cqalmanac/cqal57-1345184.
21 Given the lopsided votes in favor of passage, these results may have been idiosyncratic.
22 Analogous conditions, it is worth noting, often confound the congressional agenda of the 2020s.
23 See especially Wu (Citation2013) and Miller-Davenport (Citation2019). Hilger (Citation2017) also presents compelling evidence that white racism toward Asian Americans declined sharply during the period, at least as it relates to the earnings gap, suggesting that shifting views about the largely Asian majority in Hawaii may have facilitated statehood.
24 For recent developments, see Emily Cochrane and Patricia Mazzei, “House Passes Bill that Would Pave the Way for Puerto Rican Statehood, The New York Times, December 15, 2022, http://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/us/politics/house-puerto-rican-statehood.html.