The story
During the Baptist State Convention of 1833, at Cartledge Creek Baptist Church in Rockingham, North Carolina, establishment of Wake Forest Institute was ratified. The school was founded after the North Carolina Baptist State Convention purchased a 615-acre (249 ha) plantation from Calvin Jones in an area north of Raleigh (Wake County) called the "Forest of Wake". The new school, designed to teach both Baptist ministers and laymen, opened on February 3, 1834, as the Wake Forest Manual Labor Institute. Students and staff were required to spend half of each day doing manual labor on its plantation. Samuel Wait, a Baptist minister, was selected as the principal, later president, of the institute.
Wake Forest College
In 1838, the school was renamed Wake Forest College, and the manual-labor system was abandoned. The town that grew up around the college came to be called the town of Wake Forest. In 1862, during the American Civil War, the school closed due to the loss of most students and some faculty to service in the Confederate States Army. The college re-opened in 1866 and prospered over the next four decades under the leadership of presidents Washington Manly Wingate, Thomas H. Pritchard, and Charles Taylor. In 1894, the School of Law was established, followed by the School of Medicine in 1902. In 1911, Louise Heims Beck became the university's first librarian, later going on to become a vaudeville performer and the recipient of a Tony Award. The university held its first summer session in 1921. Lea Laboratory was built in 1887–1888, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
The leading college figure in the early 20th century was William L. Poteat, a biologist and the first layman to be elected president in the college's history. "Dr. Billy" continued to promote growth, hired many outstanding professors, and expanded the science curriculum. He also stirred upheaval among North Carolina Baptists with his strong support of teaching the theory of evolution but eventually won formal support from the Baptist State Convention for academic freedom at the college.
Move to Winston-Salem
The School of Medicine moved to Winston-Salem (then North Carolina's second-largest city) in 1941 under the supervision of Dean Coy Cornelius Carpenter, who guided the school through the transition from a two-year to a four-year program. The school then became the Bowman Gray School of Medicine. The following year, 1942, Wake Forest admitted its first female undergraduate students, after World War II dramatically depleted the pool of male students.
In 1946, as a result of large gifts from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, the college moved to Winston-Salem for the beginning of the fall 1956 term. Charles and Mary Reynolds Babcock (daughter of R. J. Reynolds) donated to the college about 330 acres (1.3 km2) of fields and woods at "Reynolda", their estate. A name change to Smith Reynolds University was considered, but dropped. From 1952 to 1956, fourteen new buildings were constructed on the new campus. These buildings were constructed in Georgian style. The old campus in Wake Forest was sold to the Baptist State Convention to establish the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Desegregation
On April 27, 1962, Wake Forest's board of trustees voted to accept Edward Reynolds, a native of Ghana, as the first black full-time undergraduate at the school. This made Wake Forest the first major private university in the South to desegregate. Reynolds, a transfer student from Shaw University, became the first black graduate of the university in 1964, when he earned a bachelor's degree in history. He went on to earn master's degrees at Ohio University and Yale Divinity School, and a Ph.D. in African history from the University of London in 1972. He became a professor of history at the University of California, San Diego, and the author of several history books. Other diversity milestones:
Japanese student Konsukie Akiyama became the first Asian graduate in 1909.
The first women undergraduates were admitted in 1942.
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James G. Jones became the first American Indian graduate in 1958. He was from the Lumbee nation.
On February 23, 1960, ten Wake Forest students joined eleven students from Winston-Salem State Teachers College (present-day Winston-Salem State University) for a sit-in at Woolworth's lunch counter in downtown Winston-Salem.
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in Wait Chapel on the Wake Forest campus on October 11, 1962.
Herman Eure (biology) and Dolly McPherson (English) became the first black tenure-track professors in 1974.
The Office of Minority Affairs was formed in 1978 and later became the Office of Multicultural Affairs. Wake Forest also added an Office of Diversity & Inclusion, an LGBTQ Center, and a Women's Center.
In 1982, poet/actress/author Maya Angelou was hired as Reynolds Professor of American Studies.
In 2002, Wake Forest added a cultural diversity requirement to its curriculum.
Wake Forest appointed its first (part-time) Muslim chaplain in 2010. In 2011, the first associate chaplain for Jewish Life was named.
Recognition
Wake Forest's Associate Provost for Diversity and Inclusion Barbee Oakes was named one of the "25 Women Making a Difference" in 2012 by Diverse Issues in Higher Education, recognizing her for commitment to initiatives that promote pluralism and foster community. Wake Forest was among 40 schools across the country awarded the 2012 Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award by Insight into Diversity magazine.
Recent history
A graduate studies program was inaugurated in 1961, and in 1967 the school became the fully accredited Wake Forest University. The Babcock Graduate School of Management, now known as the School of Business, was established in 1969. The James R. Scales Fine Arts Center opened in 1979.
In 1979, Wake Forest began a process to change its relationship with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, in order to obtain more academic freedom and choose non-Baptist trustees.
In 1986, the school gained autonomy from the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina and established a fraternal relationship with it.
Middleton House and its surrounding 5 acres (2.0 ha) were deeded by gift to Wake Forest by Philip Hanes and his wife Charlotte in 1992. The donation was completed in 2011.
On September 16, 2015, Wake Forest announced plans to offer undergraduate classes downtown in Innovation Quarter in Winston-Salem. On March 18, 2016, the school announced programs in biomedical sciences and engineering at its new Wake Downtown campus, opening in January 2017. Wake Downtown is in a former R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company plant, next to the second campus of the School of Medicine, which opened in July 2016.
In November 2016, Wake forest was involved in a college football scandal known as WakeyLeaks, which involved leaking playbook information from the Wake Forest Demon Deacons football team.
On March 12, 2019, Wake Forest was one of eight colleges and universities involved in the Varsity Blues scandal. It was later revealed that former Wake Forest volleyball coach Bill Ferguson accepted a $50,000 bribe to help a future student be admitted into the university.
On February 21, 2020, Wake Forest officially apologized for the institution's role in benefiting from enslaved people during slavery.
Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and Atrium Health announced a partnership in 2019 with the goal of a Charlotte, North Carolina, campus for the Wake Forest School of Medicine. More specific details were revealed in February 2021, including a seven-story tower, and on March 24, 2021, Atrium Health announced a 20-acre site at Baxter and McDowell Streets. Also, School of Medicine dean Dr. Julie Ann Freischlag said construction would start in 2022, with the first students attending in 2024. It officially opened 2025. Hatch, who was leaving as president June 30, said Wake Forest would have a School of Professional Studies at the Charlotte location in 2022.
Political activities
On March 17, 1978, president Jimmy Carter made a major National Security address in Wait Chapel. The school has hosted presidential debates on two occasions. The first was between then-Vice President George H. W. Bush and Governor Michael Dukakis on September 25, 1988. The second debate was between then-governor George W. Bush and vice-president Al Gore on October 11, 2000. Both debates were hosted in Wait Chapel. Bill Clinton campaigned at Wake Forest for his wife Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign.
From Wikipedia’s article on Wake Forest University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5