Short answers, pulled from the story.
Wake Forest University was founded on the 3rd of February 1834, originally as the Wake Forest Manual Labor Institute. It was established by North Carolina Baptists on a 615-acre plantation purchased from Calvin Jones in an area called the Forest of Wake, north of Raleigh.
Wake Forest moved to Winston-Salem in 1956 after large gifts from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation made relocation possible. Charles and Mary Reynolds Babcock donated about 330 acres of their Reynolda estate for the new campus, and fourteen new buildings in Georgian style were constructed there between 1952 and 1956.
Edward Reynolds, a native of Ghana and transfer student from Shaw University, became the first Black full-time undergraduate at Wake Forest after the board of trustees voted to admit him on the 27th of April 1962. He earned a bachelor's degree in history in 1964 and later received a Ph.D. in African history from the University of London in 1972.
Notable NBA alumni include Tim Duncan, a two-time league MVP and five-time NBA champion; Chris Paul, a 12-time NBA All-Star and 2006 NBA Rookie of the Year; and Tyrone Curtis Muggsy Bogues, the shortest player ever to play in the NBA. Jeff Teague, John Collins, and Randolph Childress, MVP of the 1995 ACC tournament, also played for the Demon Deacons.
Wake Forest has won eleven NCAA team national championships across five sports. These include three field hockey titles (2002, 2003-2004), three men's golf titles (1974, 1975-1986), two men's tennis titles (2018-2025), one men's soccer title (2007), one women's golf title (2023), and the 1955 College World Series in baseball.
Wake Forest gained full autonomy from the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina in 1986, establishing a fraternal relationship in place of a governing one. The process began in 1979, when the university sought greater academic freedom and the right to appoint non-Baptist trustees.