Education
Wake Forest University.
Wake Forest University.
Foreign other people with this name go to William Poteat (disambiguation). Born in Caswell County, North Carolina to a noted Baptist, slave-owning family, Poteat went on to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wake Forest College (then located in Wake Forest, North Carolina) in 1877. Shortly after graduating, he was hired by his alma mater as a natural science instructor.
He taught himself biology (with which he had little previous experience) and his studies led him to discover Darwinian concepts of natural selection and evolution.
Poteat reconciled the contradictions he found between these notions and his Christian outlook. Poteat fought back and survived, and helped persuade the North Carolina General Assembly to defeat a bill that would have banned the teaching of evolution (as other states had done.
See Scopes Monkey Trial).
Though a Baptist, he defended the teaching of evolution as the "divine method of creation", arguing it was fully compatible with Baptist beliefs.