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Biography · Education & Scholarship

Carlotta Stewart Lai

1881–1952

United States

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Biography

Carlotta Stewart Lai (September 16, 1881 – July 6, 1952) was an educator and administrator in the Hawaiian public schools for four decades. She was the first African American school principal in Honolulu. Lai, an African American from New York, worked as a teacher and educational leader at a time when these occupations were largely closed to African Americans on the U. S. mainland, and she achieved professional success at a time when African Americans represented only 0.2 percent of the population of Hawaii.

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Biography text · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source checked 2026-10-13

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