Locating Slavery's Legacies @ University of Virginia

Memorial Honor

Scholarships/Prizes

Lost Cause

Poteat, Ida Isabella

Poteat, Ida Isabella

Ida Poteat Scholarship

Since the 1930s, scholarships and awards have been given to students at Meredith College in honor of long time art professor and founder of the K.K.K. Art Club, Ida Poteat. A loan fund in her honor began in 1933 and was converted to a scholarship in 1946. The art award, given to students of notable artistic ability, began in 1938. The two honors merged at some point in the twentieth century with the scholarship being the surviving manifestation. At that point, the Ida Poteat Scholarship was set up to honor students who represent "the Meredith ideal." In the past, a committee of faculty and alumnae worked together to nominate a rising junior and a rising senior for the award. For much of the scholarship's recent history, the selection committee has included faculty from the arts & humanities. As a result of findings generated by 2020's campus wide Anti-Racism Initiative, the Ida Poteat Scholarship has been renamed and converted into an endowment for the Art Department.

Meredith College alumnae

February 3, 1933

1946

April 2023

1890-1945: Era of the Lost Cause, Jim Crow legal segregation and discrimination, and organized anti-Black racism

Meredith College alumnae and Poteat family donors

Meredith College; Raleigh, North Carolina

Altered - Renamed

Poteat Scholarship Announced

Ida Poteat Mourned