"Carlotta Stewart-Lai" (September 16, 1881-July 6, 1952)

The third child of T. Mcants Stewart and Charlotte Pearl Harris,Carlotta was born in Brooklyn,New York, where she attended public school and spent her formative years.She was eighteen when she arrived in Hawaii in 1898, accompanying her father and stepmother.Carlotta had hoped to contine her education in Hawaii and began planning her future. This expectation was realized in 1902,when,as one of eight members in the senior class, she graduated from Oahu College after one year.After graduation she completed the requirements for for a normal (teaching) school certificate,which she received in 1902, and she promptly accepted a teaching position in the practice department of the normal school in July.She remained at the normal school for several years, where she taught Englisg,her major at Oahu College.Carlotta teaching career illustrates many of the opportunities and challenges that black professional women faced in Hawaii during the early twentieth century. Her annual salary of $660 in 1902 placed her comfortably in the black middle class, both in Hawaii and on the mainland. Within four years her salary had increased to $900,which supplemented by typing in her spare time.By 1908 her teaching salary had increased to$ 1000 per month. This not provided a comfortable standard of living, but also financed extensive travel throughout the the islands when her classes were not in session,permitted occasional trips to the mainland by ocean steamer to visit realtives,and allowed her to provide limited financial assistance to her mother and two brothers.Carlotta was highly respected in the community as well  as in the classroom.She told her brother,Mcants,during the 1906 school year that in addition to teaching,she was busy with classes,vacations,camping,surfing, and frequent parties.Carlotta also attended Sunday baseball games on the islands and served as coach of the junior and senior female teams in her local community.her career advancement,her acceptance into the larger Hawaiian community,and her strong friendships were pivotal factors in her decision to remain in Hawaii following her father and stepmother's departure in 1905.Conditions were neither difficult nor racially oppressive for a black professional woman, in Hawaii,there was no substantial black community before World War 2AND Carlotta saw few black people either in classrooms or outside.Most of her socializing took place in groups,relieving her of the pressure to find a companion with a comparable racial and social background.She remained isolated from her family and following the death of her mother in 1906 she felt particularly distraught.She had promised to help her mother financilally following her divorce from T.McCants Stewart an obligation that, by her own admission, she had neglected. Carlotta was not altogether to blame,her daddy prohibited his three children from contacting their natural mother while they were under his care following his remarriage in 1893. The news of her mother's death triggered feelings of alienation and depression, and in 1907 Carlotta considered returning to the mainland to live permently for the first time since her arrival in Hawaii.She decided not to return to the mainland.Despite her intermittent loneliness,the depression following the death of her mother, and her financial problems,which established professional woman in the Hawaiian schools, a status she would have been unlikely to achieve in any Pacific Coast community in the early twentieth century because of racial discrimination. She decided to remain Hawaii. Carlotta decision proved to be advantageous, for within two years she had been promoted to principal of an elementary school, with an increase in salary. Her rapid advancement in the space of seven years was an impressive achievement,although many black women had established teaching careers and a handful were school administrators by 1909,it was unusual for a black woman at the age of  twenty eight to serve as principal of a multiracial school. This achievement was particularly striking in a society in which few black people lived and,therefore, had no political influence to request a job of this magnitude.Her pupils reflected a true cross section of Hawaii's school-aged population,which grew rapidly between 1900 and 1940.IN 1933,for example,the composition of her pupils included Hawaiians, Japanese,Filipinos,Koreans,and Portuguese.Sixteen white Americans also were listed among the student population,but no black students were included.It is unlikely that she had contact with more than a handful of black students before World War 2, and the majority were probably the children of U.S. military personnel and black laborers who worked on sugar and pineapple plantations.The number of pupils who attended varied annually,ranging between 200 and 300 students.The Hanamaulu School World, reported,283 students of various races attended the Hanamaulu School,were Carlotta served as principal in 1933.Between 1940 and 1944, the school's enrollment declined to 256 students.In addition to managing the school, she supervised several classroom teachers, the school librarian,and the cafeteria manager;she also taught English. These responsibilities were a firm testament of the confidence that public school officials had in her administrative ability,they also indicate how far she had come in her career.She was not a social reformer and never joined any organization designed to promote the advancement of African Americans, Puerto Ricans, Asians, Hawaiians, or women.It is true that Hawaii did not have chapters of the most prominent black national organizations,such as the NAACP, the National Urban League,the National Association of Colored Women (NACW)or the National Council of Negro Women during those years,Carlotta had grown up in a family of black activists.Her brothers,Mcants and Gilchrist,both attorneys,were active in civil rights in Portland and New York,and her father had successfully challenged several Jim Crow laws in the state of New York and won the praise of Booker T. Washington.In 1916, as Carlotta approached her thirty-fifth birthday,she married Yun Tim Lai, of Chinese ancestry,at Anahola, Kauai County.Yun,five years younger, than Carlotta, was sales manager of Garden Island Motors, Ltd.The marriage ended in 1935 when Yun died suddenly in Hong Kong while visiting realtives. Carlotta never remarried.In 1944, after forty-two years of public service in the Hawaiian schools, she retired. Carlotta lived her final years of her life in Kauai on Anahola Bay, before ill health forced her to enter a Honolulu nursing home in 1951.Her health declined rapidly, and she died.