Wake Forest University history

In the year 1838, Wake Forest transitioned into a liberal arts college and began rapid expansion during the mid-nineteenth and throughout the twentieth century.

The Raleigh and Gaston Railroad, constructed along the eastern border of the growing school, was completed in 1840.

Salem (from the Hebrew shalom, meaning “peace”) was laid out in 1766 by Moravian colonists in the centre of their Wachovia land tract; it was incorporated in 1856, when the land was sold to outsiders.

When the Civil War began in 1862 the students and at least one faculty member left to enlist, causing the College to close.

When the college reopened in 1865, much depleted, there were still very few buildings on and around the campus.

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.

Richard Joshua Reynolds founded his tobacco company there in 1875, and tobacco still dominates the city’s diversified industry, which includes the manufacture of textiles, beer, food products, apparel, batteries, and swimming pool filters and pumps.

The Wake Forest School of Law was founded in 1894 in the town of Wake Forest and, since moving to the Reynolda Campus, has grown into one of the most competitive law schools in the United States.

The mill continued in operation until its closing in 1976, providing a second major blow to Wake Forest area residents. It was actually incorporated as the Town of Royall Mills in 1907, two years prior to the official incorporation of the Town of Wake Forest, although its predecessor, the Town of Wake Forest College, already existed! Residents had no say in the governing of their town.

In 1909 the charter was amended and the town renamed, Wake Forest.

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.

Winston-Salem was created in 1913 from two towns originally 1 mile (1.6 km) apart.

The university held its first summer session in 1921.

In the year 1936, the law school was added as well as the Bowan Gray School of Medicine.

In 1941, the Bowman Gray School of Medicine was inaugurated as well as the first academic honor society for the school, Phi Beta Kappa.

In 1946, the school accepted an invitation from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation to move 100 miles west to Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

What began on the former campus in 1948 as the School of Business Administration for graduate studies is now the nationally prominent Wake Forest University School of Business, which offers both undergraduate and masters-level programs.

In 1949, the number of students increased to over 2,000 and new religion and business academic departments were acquired by the university.

Initially, Wake Forest University was located in Wake Forest, North Carolina for 122 years, but under the guidance of President Harold Tribble, the campus moved to Winston Salem North Carolina in 1956.

On April 27, 1962, Wake Forest's board of trustees voted to accept Edward Reynolds, a native of the African nation of Ghana, as the first black full-time undergraduate at the school.

Reynolds, a transfer student from Shaw University, later became the first black graduate of the university in 1964, when he earned a bachelor's degree in history.

The Babcock Graduate School of Management, now known as the School of Business, was established in 1969.

Beginning in 1979, the influence of the Baptist Convention on the university began dissolving as the university severed funding from the Baptists and instituted a more liberal selection of university trustee members.

In 1986, Wake Forest gained autonomy from the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina and established a fraternal relationship with it.

The first was between then-Vice President George H.W. Bush and Governor Michael Dukakis on September 25, 1988.

In 1995 the commissary building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and Jim Adams and Steve Gould received an Anthemion Award for the project.

The surrounding housing village was designated as the Glen Royall Mill Village Historic District and listed on the National Register on August 27, 1999.

He assumed office on July 1, 2005, succeeding Thomas K. Hearn, Jr., who had retired after 22 years in office.

Doctor Jones probably built the sturdy, two-story frame house in the center of what became Wake Forest College and is now (2012) the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

On September 16, 2015, Wake Forest announced plans to offer undergraduate classes downtown in Innovation Quarter in Winston-Salem.

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 2017, soon after the new medical school facility opened, Wake Downtown was established in Innovation Quarter.

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.

On February 21, 2020, Wake Forest would apologize for the institution's role in profiting and benefiting from enslaved people during slavery.