Dr. Calvin Jones, formerly of Massachusetts, purchases 615 acres of land, which he later calls Wake Forest. Jones, who married into a slaveholding, North Carolinian family, enslaved 20 people.

Samuel Wait moves to North Carolina with his wife, Sarah Wait, to become the minister at New Bern Baptist Church. The congregation consisted of 22 white people and eight Black people, two of whom were likely free. While Samuel Wait believed that ministers should not speak publicly about slavery, in 1830, the Waits began to enslave people to perform labor in their house and on their farm.

Samuel Wait establishes Wake Forest Manual Training Institute (later Wake Forest College and now Wake Forest University) to train future Baptist ministers. Account books from 1834 show that Wake Forest hired four enslaved laborers — Alec, Henry and wife, and Charlotte — that year.

Upon his death, John Blount donates his estate, including land and enslaved people, to Wake Forest. The endowment of the estate and the enslaved people become official in 1839, when Blount’s wife passes away. 

The College building is completed, in part by people who were enslaved by Captain John Berry. Two enslaved people fell from the building during construction and died. Both were buried in Wake Forest cemetery.

Southern white Baptists split from northern Baptists over the issue of slavery — with southern Baptists being pro-slavery. Wake Forest remained connected to the Southern Baptist Convention until 1986.

On May 7, Wake Forest sells 16 enslaved people — Harvey, Tom, Venus and her child, Mary, Emma, Lettice, Isaac, Jim, Lucy, Caroline, Pompie, Emma, Nancy, Harriet and her child, Joseph, Harry, Ann and her two children, Thomas and Mary — at auction. 

As the Civil War rages, enslaved people worshiping at Wake Forest Baptist Church found the Olive Branch Baptist Church, which still exists to this day, though it has since moved from the college grounds to another location in Wake Forest, N.C.

Tom Jeffries, a free Black man, comes to Wake Forest to work. He helps build and beautify Wake Forest’s campus. His funeral was held in the college chapel, and in 1933, a bronze plaque was dedicated in his honor. That plaque has since moved to Tribble Courtyard.

An illustration in the Howler depicts a white person chasing a caricatured Black person. The image appears on a page dedicated to the track team.

Wake Forest moves to Winston-Salem, N.C. following a donation by the Reynolds family of land and money. After the move, Wake Forest College is renamed Wake Forest University.

Trustees vote to end racial segregation, making Wake Forest the first “major private institution” in the South to desegregate.

Ed Reynolds of Ghana becomes the first Black, full-time undergraduate at Wake Forest.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks in Wait Chapel after being invited by the College Union. 

Maya Angelou is awarded an honorary degree from Wake Forest.

 Wake Forest hosts Black city leaders for an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Banquet. In protest, white members of a fraternity (the name of which was never reported) displayed the confederate flag. Black students led a protest later that year against this action and Kappa Alpha’s tradition of donning confederate apparel during “Old South Week.” During this time, the Ku Klux Klan offered its assistance to the fraternity that hung the flags, but it was denied.

Maya Angelou is named the university’s first Reynolds Professor of American Studies. As of Sept. 28, 2023, that post is currently held by Alton B. Pollard. 

An article in The Howler yearbook argued that electing a Black homecoming king and queen did not “represent the entire student body.” The article sparked much debate on campus and in the pages of the Old Gold & Black. The 2003 editor apologized in the Sept. 4, 2003, edition of the Old Gold & Black, and the Sept. 11, 2003 edition shows that a forum was held for students to voice concerns.

“While the current staff of The Howler cannot be held responsible for that publication, it is obviously upsetting that it was not only written but also printed in our publication,” current Howler Editor-in-Chief Alexandra Halas told the Old Gold & Black in a statement. “The current staff of The Howler and our editorial process are much more critical and aim to accurately

The Office of Diversity and Inclusion is created under the leadership of Assistant Provost Barbee Oakes.

The Social Justice Incubator, a “space for students to collaborate, engage and organize around issues of social justice,” is created.

A video, in which then-Wake Forest freshman Kara Nelson admits that she called her resident adviser a racial slur, circulates around the Wake Forest community. Nelson withdrew from the university two days later.

Najee Ali Baker, a Winston-Salem State student, is fatally shot at a party on Wake Forest’s campus. According to a lawsuit against the university, marginalized students had raised concerns about safety for their organizations’ events. The lawsuit was later dismissed on procedural grounds. 

An Instagram post endorsing a write-in campaign for Student Body President says the candidate will build a wall between Wake Forest and Winston-Salem State and would make the latter institution pay for it, an apparent reference to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s border wall plan. Dr. Nathan Hatch, who was president of Wake Forest at the time, condemned the post.

Hatch establishes the Slavery, Race and Memory Project, along with the President’s Commission on Race, Equality and Community, and the Committee on the Intersection of Incidents of Bias, Expression and Conduct.

Emails to university centers and faculty in the Sociology and WGSS departments call for a “purge of minorities.” The emails praise the “standards set by well-raised white men.”

The President’s Commission on Race, Equity and Community recommends the renaming of buildings and roads on campus that bear the name of Washington Manly Wingate, the university’s third president and the man who decided to sell 16 humans at auction on May 7, 1860. Students silently protested the university’s involvement in slavery, noting their plan “to stand in recognition of the involuntary sacrifices of enslaved people and the continuing impact of slavery's legacy on current students.”