Lorrin A. Thurston and the Citizens' Committee of Public Safety led the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the government of Queen Liliʻuokalani (pictured).

Lorrin Andrews Thurston was a Hawaiian citizen lawyer, politician, and businessman. Thurston played a prominent role in the revolution that overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom to replace Queen Liliʻuokalani with the Republic of Hawaii, with discreet US support for which Congress much later apologized. He published the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, and owned other enterprises. From 1906 to 1916, he and his network lobbied with national politicians to create a national park to preserve the Hawaiian volcanoes.

The Committee of Safety, formally the Citizen's Committee of Public Safety, was a 13-member group of the Annexation Club. The group was composed of mostly Hawaiian subjects of American descent and American citizens who were members of the Missionary Party, as well as some foreign residents in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. The group planned and carried out the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi on January 17, 1893. The goal of this group was to achieve annexation of Hawaiʻi by the United States. The new independent Republic of Hawaiʻi government was thwarted in this goal by the administration of President Grover Cleveland, and it was not until 1898 and under the administration of William McKinley that the United States Congress approved a joint resolution of annexation creating the U.S. Territory of Hawaiʻi.

The Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown in a coup d'état against Queen Liliʻuokalani that took place on January 17, 1893, on the island of Oahu. The coup was led by the Committee of Safety, composed of seven foreign residents and six Hawaiian Kingdom subjects of American descent in Honolulu. The Committee prevailed upon American minister John L. Stevens to call in the US Marines to protect the national interest of the United States of America. The insurgents established the Republic of Hawaii, but their ultimate goal was the annexation of the islands to the United States, which occurred in 1898.