For Nancy Lee, the scholarship to the city’s only art academy symbolizes the validation of her talent. Encouraged by her art teacher, she feels in her heart that what she creates expresses her soul, but the scholarship symbolizes that she has reason to aspire to becoming an artist. 

The scholarship symbolizes her gateway to the art world. The prestigious academy is beyond the resources of her family. Her parents value education—both attended Black colleges back home, and her mother, a social worker, earned a master’s degree in the city. Her father moved their family North specifically to secure his precocious daughter the education she could not have received in the South as a Black student. Thus, the scholarship symbolizes not only personal achievement but hope not available to her without the money.

The scholarship is the result of a blind judging process—the committee does not know who they select until after they have made their choice. That choice is based solely on talent. When the committee discovers Nancy Lee’s racial identity and revokes the award, the scholarship symbolizes the bigotry and hypocrisy of white America.