Glenn Blackburn was a freshman at Wake Forest in the spring of 1960. He says it all goes back to the sit-in movements in Greensboro and Winston-Salem, which stirred up a lot of discussion and debate on campus over civil rights and the issue of race. Blackburn became the leader of the African Student Project, which aimed to integrate the college. He likes to say they were politely confrontational. "We weren't going to try to persuade anyone, we were going to confront in a fairly polite way. And the way to confront was to bring an African student to campus and say here, he's been converted by missionaries - why won't you let him in?" 

Ed Wilson, Provost Emeritus of Wake Forest, was Dean of the college at the time. He agreed that the Baptist denomination’s missionary work in Africa laid the groundwork for integrating the school, because there was a tendency to feel that Wake Forest was reaching out to a world and a prospect that was important. Because of that, Wilson says it was easier to bring in a student from Africa than from eastern NC where all the segregation laws and Jim Crow laws still existed.

Blackburn and his fellow activists mobilized students and faculty in their effort to support integration. They raised money to eventually bring the first black student, Ed Reynolds of Ghana, to Wake Forest. He notes that it wasn’t a guarantee of getting in to the college, but of just applying. 

It was two years before the Wake Forest Board of Trustees would allow black students to apply for admission. In the meantime, Reynolds arrived in North Carolina and began studying at Shaw University, a historically black college in Raleigh.  Reynolds was finally given permission to attend classes in 1962. 

Despite a vote by the student body against integration, Blackburn and other supportive students and staff were determined to make Reynolds’ experience a success. Reynolds says most students were supportive, though "occasionally you got something nasty mail, a gorilla with 'Ed Reynolds' written underneath, but it didn’t happen that often. There were a few people who weren’t friendly, and I remember one particular guy who was pretty nasty. If you sat anywhere near him he would get up and move."

Reynolds graduated in 1964 with a bachelor’s degree in history. He went on to teach history at the University of California San Diego. 

Ed Wilson believes the process of full integration proceeded too slowly, but he says Wake Forest now reaps the benefits of diversity. "Students coming here now have learned to live in a multicultural community. And I think that has led to desirable social and political consequences in terms of the way they feel about the world."