[Stephen] Grover Cleveland (1837-1908)

Beginning in 2007, Hawaiian Restoration Day has remembered President Grover Cleveland’s support for the government of the Hawaiian Republic and his advocacy of Queen Lili'uokalani. When the Hawaiian queen was overthrown in 1893, President Cleveland denounced the coup d’état and supported the restoration of the queen as head of state of the Kingdom of Hawaii. Cleveland withdrew his opposition when it became clear that the overthrow was an indigenous affair. Nonetheless, each year in April, a delegation of Hawaiians from the Pacific Justice and Reconciliation Center in Honolulu comes to Princeton to pay tribute to the former president and his support of Hawaiian sovereign rights. They decorate his gravestone and the bust of Grover Cleveland in Cleveland Tower with beads, shells, and coins, as is Hawaiian custom.