Winston-Salem, North Carolina · Founded 1892 · Rams (Amon the Ram)
“The one-room academy that became an HBCU — and gave the world Earl 'The Pearl' Monroe, the Red Sea of Sound, and a century of Black teachers and nurses.”
Joint halftime show between the Red Sea of Sound and Central State's band — two HBCU programs sharing one field.
Full 2020 Red Sea of Sound field show, a snapshot of the Magruder-era band at its peak.
4K footage of the Red Sea of Sound marching in parade, 2024.
The 2015 homecoming halftime show — the Red Sea of Sound on its biggest stage of the year.
HBCU Gameday feature on how a smaller Division II band builds a national profile.
Documentary on Clarence Gaines, Earl Monroe, and the 1967 national championship — the defining story in school history.
Actual game footage from the 1966–67 championship season with Monroe in a Rams uniform.
CBS documentary treatment of the Gaines–Monroe era and the 1967 title run.
The school's own athletics channel honoring Monroe during Legacy Week.
Full game: the 2012 national championship, the farthest any HBCU football team has ever gone in Division II.
Archived footage of the 2012 title game from Valdosta State's university archives — the other sideline's view of WSSU history.
Behind-the-scenes: the Rams practicing the week of the 2012 national championship game.
WSSU Class of 1967. NBA Hall of Famer; led the Rams to the 1967 national title averaging 41.5 ppg; #2 overall pick in the 1967 draft, NBA Rookie of the Year, 1973 NBA champion with the Knicks.
Class of 1991. The face of ESPN — lead voice of First Take, NBA Countdown, and SportsCenter; came to WSSU on a basketball scholarship under Clarence Gaines and graduated in advertising and communications.
Attended Winston-Salem Teachers College in the early 1950s before leaving school; went on to become the Nation of Islam's longtime leader. His 1996 return visit to campus made the Greensboro News & Record.
NFL wide receiver — a Pittsburgh Steelers standout and Pro Bowler out of the WSSU program.
NFL defensive end; played four years at WSSU before the Tennessee Titans drafted him in 2008, then spent years as a mainstay with the Rams.
Early Black NBA pioneer; a WSSU star who played for the St. Louis Hawks.
NBA forward (Washington Bullets, San Antonio Spurs) out of the Rams program.
Teammate of Earl Monroe on the 1967 title team; drafted into the NBA that same year.
NBA guard who later became an NBA referee — one of the few people to play in and then officiate the league.
NBA center in the 1970s after his WSSU career.
NFL wide receiver, best known with the Miami Dolphins.
NFL running back for the Dallas Cowboys.
NFL running back (Steelers, Panthers, Bills).
NFL defensive lineman.
Professional NASCAR race car driver — one of the most prominent young Black drivers in the sport.
College basketball coach (Delaware head coach); played with Stephen A. Smith at WSSU.
Actress and singer (The Color Purple, The Hunger Games).
Actor (Notorious, The Hotwives).
Rapper and singer who broke out nationally in the 2020s.
WSSU Class of 1977. North Carolina legislator and community leader.
Philadelphia pastor, politician, and civil rights figure.
Pastor and former North Carolina state representative.
Educator and North Carolina legislator.
Former WSSU student and fashion designer whose 2022 death while vacationing in Mexico drew national attention.
Simon Green Atkins was born in 1863 in Haywood, Chatham County, North Carolina, to farmers who had been enslaved, two years before the end of legalized slavery. He was a precocious student who refused to take learning for granted. Everything Winston-Salem State would become traces back to the fact that this one man decided education was the way out — and then built the door himself.
By 1881, Atkins had founded the North Carolina Negro Teachers Association, pulling Black educators across the state into one organization at a time when Black teachers had almost no institutional support. It was the kind of organizing work that made him known beyond his own classroom. Nine years later, when he arrived in Winston-Salem, he already had a reputation as someone who built institutions, not just lessons.
In 1890, Atkins was offered the position of principal of Depot Street School in Winston-Salem, then the largest public grammar school for Black students in North Carolina. While there, he began work to improve living conditions for African Americans well beyond the classroom. He and his wife Oleona became the first settlers in Columbian Heights in 1892, a neighborhood he envisioned as a center of mutual understanding and regard between the races — and the ground where his school would stand.
Winston-Salem State University was founded as Slater Industrial Academy on September 28, 1892, in Columbian Heights. It began in a one-room frame structure with 25 pupils and one teacher. The date — September 28 — is still observed as Founder's Day, and the city's official WSSU Day proclamation ties the school's annual Day of Giving to that founding weekend.
In 1895, the State of North Carolina formally recognized the school, moving it from a private community effort toward a public institution. That recognition was the first step in a long climb from one room to a university. It put the Academy on the state's books and set up the charter that would follow four years later.
In 1899 the school was chartered by the state as Slater Industrial and State Normal School. The 'normal school' designation meant it was officially in the business of training teachers, which was the whole point — the Black schools of North Carolina were starved for trained teachers, and Atkins was building the pipeline. That teacher-training identity would define the school for the next half-century.
From 1904 to 1910, Cadd Grant O'Kelly served as president, followed by Francis Marion Kennedy from 1910 to 1913. These were caretaker years between Atkins's two terms, and they kept the young institution steady through the lean early 1900s. Atkins returned as president in 1913 and stayed until 1934, giving the school a founder's steady hand across its first four decades.
In 1925, the North Carolina General Assembly recognized the school's curriculum above high school, changed its name to Winston-Salem Teachers College, and empowered it under the State Board of Education to confer degrees. Winston-Salem Teachers College thus became the first Black institution in the nation to grant degrees for teaching in the elementary grades. For a school that started with one teacher and 25 kids, that was a genuine national milestone.
When Simon Green Atkins died in 1934, his son Francis Loguen Atkins succeeded him as president and held the office until 1961 — 27 years. The younger Atkins was one of the nine children Simon and Oleona raised in Winston-Salem. His long, quiet tenure carried the school through the Depression, World War II, and the early civil rights era without losing its footing.
In 1947, Kenneth R. Williams — a future president of the school — was elected Winston-Salem's first African-American alderman, the first Black person elected to the city council since 1900, and the first African American to defeat a white opponent in a twentieth-century election in a Southern city. He served from 1947 to 1951. When he later led the college, he brought the same barrier-breaking energy: in 1961 the school named him executive vice president, then interim president, then president in 1962.
The School of Nursing was established in 1953, awarding graduates the Bachelor of Science degree. Nursing became one of the school's signature strengths — alongside teaching, it is the field the school is still best known for producing graduates in. That pipeline of Black nurses out of segregated-era North Carolina is one of the institution's most concrete legacies.
In 1963 the North Carolina General Assembly authorized changing the name from Winston-Salem Teachers College to Winston-Salem State College, reflecting that the school had outgrown the teacher-college label. Under Kenneth R. Williams, who had taken the presidency the year before, the curriculum was broadening fast. The 1963 name change was the last step before full university status.
In 1967, Earl 'The Pearl' Monroe — a senior who averaged an astronomical 41.5 points per game, the nation's scoring leader — carried Winston-Salem State to the NCAA College Division (Small College) national championship under legendary coach Clarence 'Big House' Gaines. It was the first NCAA title ever won by a historically black college or university. Monroe was so electric that the school moved its home games off campus to the Winston-Salem Memorial Coliseum, where crowds of all races packed in — a small crack in the segregated South that people in the city still talk about.
A statute designating Winston-Salem State College as Winston-Salem State University received legislative approval in 1969. The name on the door finally matched what the school had been growing into for decades. Three years later the General Assembly reorganized North Carolina higher education entirely, and WSSU's place in the new order was set.
On July 1, 1972, Winston-Salem State University became one of the constituent institutions of the University of North Carolina, subject to the control of a Board of Governors. Kenneth R. Williams, who had led the school as president since 1962, became its first chancellor — the title the UNC System uses for campus chiefs. He retired in 1977 and was named Chancellor Emeritus in 1978; the 1,800-seat campus auditorium had already been named for him in 1975.
Cleon F. Thompson Jr. became chancellor in 1985 and served a full decade, the longest chancellorship of the modern era to that point. Thompson was an unusual figure in Black college leadership — he had already served as chancellor of North Carolina A&T (1980–81), making him one of very few people to lead two different HBCUs as chief executive. His steady 1985–1995 run gave the campus a decade of continuity between the Williams era and the growth decades ahead.
Harold L. Martin Sr. took over as chancellor in 2000 and led the school into the new century. His six-year run set up one of the boldest gambles in school history. When he departed in 2006, the interim leadership of Michelle Howard-Vital and Pedro L. Martinez bridged the gap to Donald Reaves.
In 2006 WSSU jumped to NCAA Division I and joined the MEAC, chasing bigger stages and bigger money. The Rams were a transitional member, scheduled to gain full Division I membership and NCAA tournament access in 2011. It never happened — financial difficulties forced the school back to Division II and the CIAA for the 2010–11 season. It was a bruising, expensive lesson, but the school survived it and immediately rebuilt its athletic identity in Division II.
The Rams' football program roared back in the early 2010s, winning four CIAA championships between 2011 and 2016. The peak was 2012: a 14–1 season that carried WSSU to the NCAA Division II national championship game on December 15, 2012, the first HBCU to play for the DII football crown. They lost 35–7 to Valdosta State, but finishing the best season of any historically black college that year rewrote what people thought a Division II HBCU program could do.
Elwood L. Robinson became the 13th chancellor on January 1, 2015, and made social mobility the school's calling card. Under his leadership WSSU ranked #7 nationally on the Social Mobility Index, was named Money magazine's No. 1 public HBCU for 2019–20, and held the highest six-year graduation rate of any UNC System minority-serving institution. He also secured a $3 million gift from the Thurgood Marshall College Fund's Center for Advancing Opportunity to create the Center for the Study of Economic Mobility on campus.
In 2020, philanthropist MacKenzie Scott donated $30 million to Winston-Salem State — at the time the second-largest single gift in university history. It landed during the Robinson era's push on economic mobility and gave the school real resources to back the mission. The gift was unrestricted, which for a public HBCU is the rarest kind of money.
Elwood Robinson retired on June 30, 2023, after eight and a half years. Provost Anthony Graham — who had been provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs since 2018 — was immediately appointed interim chancellor effective July 1, 2023. Graham steadied the ship for a year while the national search ran.
Bonita J. Brown was named the 14th chancellor of Winston-Salem State University and took office July 1, 2024 — the first woman to hold the position permanently in school history. She had recently served as interim president of Northern Kentucky University and came home to North Carolina as a Wake Forest double graduate who had once worked as WSSU's assistant attorney. UNC System President Peter Hans called her 'energetic leadership and deep experience with strategy and policy exactly what WSSU needs for this moment.'
In November 2025, MacKenzie Scott donated another $50 million to Winston-Salem State, the largest single gift in the university's history. Combined with her 2020 gift, she had given WSSU $80 million in five years. It cemented the school's standing as one of the most philanthropy-backed public HBCUs in the country.
The in-state CIAA blood feud. WSSU won four conference championships between 2011 and 2016, but Fayetteville State has dominated the North Carolina CIAA circuit for much of the last decade, and the season-ending WSSU–FSU game regularly decides who owns the state. They met in Fayetteville on Nov. 8, 2025 (FSU 31, WSSU 21) with the return leg at Bowman Gray on Nov. 7, 2026.
The Charlotte rivalry. Johnson C. Smith has staked its claim as the team to beat from North Carolina in recent seasons, and the Golden Bulls beat WSSU 52–27 in Charlotte in October 2025 after WSSU had taken the 2024 meeting. It's the CIAA's biggest city-vs-city North Carolina matchup.
The Salisbury rivalry, and WSSU's homecoming game — 'Forever Red' Homecoming and Senior Day was set against Livingstone at Bowman Gray on Oct. 18, 2025. WSSU handled the Blue Bears 42–10 in 2025. Close enough to travel, heated enough to matter.
A historic CIAA-era rivalry from the decades both schools spent together in the conference before WSSU's Division I/MEAC experiment. Specific rivalry lore and game names were not verified in the sources opened for this profile.
🥁 Red Sea of Sound
The Red Sea of Sound is one of the most nationally visible Division II HBCU bands in the country — ESPN/The Undefeated ranked it the No. 1 Division II HBCU band to open the 2019 season, and it has appeared at the Honda Battle of the Bands six times (2008, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017). Its signature move is the cross-town collaboration with Wake Forest's band: the two performed together on Aug. 30, 2019 and again on Wake Forest's 2021 opening night, a genuine HBCU/PWI bridge moment in a shared city. Earlier directors before Magruder's 2004 arrival could not be verified from the sources opened.
Assumed duties as Director of Bands in fall 2004 and has led the Red Sea of Sound for two decades — Honda Battle of the Bands runs, the ESPN/First Take spotlight, the Wake Forest joint shows, and the LA Clippers HBCU Night. He also chairs the Department of Music.
Eight of the Divine Nine are active here — every org but Delta Sigma Theta, whose Gamma Phi chapter went inactive in 2010. Chapter histories run to the 1930s (Delta Alpha Sigmas, 1932) and the school's own Greek page gives every charter date. The campus runs two councils: NPHC and the Council of Independent Greek Organizations (CIGO), which houses music and service Greeks like Phi Mu Alpha, Sigma Alpha Iota, and Gamma Sigma Sigma. WSSU's signature Greek distinction: it is the birthplace of Swing Phi Swing Social Fellowship, Inc., founded April 4, 1969 by 12 women with the help of Groove Phi Groove brothers — a national Black social fellowship that now spans dozens of chapters. Step shows and homecoming are the chapters' main stages; there are no dedicated Greek houses.
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Carolina Hall was built in 1925 by students themselves, with bricks made from the campus's own brick yard. It became the main academic and classroom building and housed the school's first library. Founder Simon Green Atkins walked those halls, and the building still anchors the campus's sense of itself.
The campus archways were built in the early 1930s and once served as the entry point to campus; in 1936 the graduating class added plaques honoring Atkins and his wife Oleona Pegram Atkins. Since 2009, each new class of students has been escorted through the archways as a formal induction into the Ram Family. The arches are also worked into WSSU's logo.
The original library was housed in Blair Hall until the new O'Kelly Library was built in 1967. It has since gone through two additions and one renovation. It is the main academic library on the 117-acre campus and sits near the 2005 statue of the founder.
A 40-foot clock tower was added to campus in 2004 as part of a new pedestrian mall, and it chimes the top of each hour. The tower displays quotes from Atkins, Maya Angelou, former Chancellor Harold Martin, and Benjamin E. Mays — and during the school year it's one of the most popular hangout spots on campus.
A statue of founder Simon Green Atkins was erected in front of O'Kelly Library in 2005, right after the pedestrian mall went in. Elizabeth Heath King — who also sculpted the R.J. Reynolds statue on North Main Street — was the artist. Every Founder's Day, September 28, a wreath is placed near the statue to remember him.
In 2017 WSSU unveiled a new website, a new interactive campus map, and 'Winston,' an artificial-intelligence virtual assistant for students. For a school still building enrollment after the Division I experiment, the digital rebuild was about meeting students where they actually were.
WSSU opened the $24 million H. Douglas Covington Hall, a five-story-plus-basement, 70,000-square-foot living/learning residence hall with 150 bedrooms for 291 students, named for former chancellor H. Douglas Covington. It was built to bridge academics and residence-hall living, with an atrium lobby, recreation room, and community kitchen.
Construction began in early 2018 on a $53 million sciences building, part of the same growth push that produced Covington Hall. The school had added nearly 270,000 square feet of new and renovated space since its 2011 master plan, with close to $100 million in construction underway or planned.
The historic lawn between Blair and Carolina halls was transformed into a Zen Zone with a $30,000 beautification grant from Home Depot's Retool Your School program. Two three-person hammocks went up, the historic bell was restored with a weather-resistant coating, and students, staff, and Home Depot volunteers added a gazebo, benches, and landscaping in January 2018.
Barnes & Noble College took over management of the university bookstore in the Thompson Student Services Center, and construction nearly doubled the size of the space — a bigger presence, more logo apparel, and a new look for the Ram shop.
The Board of Trustees unanimously approved a new 20-year campus master plan (by Sasaki, who also did the 2011 plan), projecting $556 million in future construction. It calls for four new academic buildings, two new residence halls, two dorm renovations, a student success center, a renovated library — and, ambitiously, a 6,000-seat on-campus football stadium plus a 3,000-seat convocation center to replace the off-campus Bowman Gray arrangement.
WSSU put out a design-services RFQ in October 2025 for the Pegram Hall Renovation & Elevator Addition project, with an approved budget of $16 million. Built in 1937, the four-level, 19,650-square-foot building was a residence hall that had sat offline for years; the scope converts it to offices, lounges, and support space with a new elevator, exterior ramps, and full new mechanical systems.
The towering figure in WSSU athletics history is Clarence 'Big House' Gaines, the Hall of Fame basketball coach who built the program and coached Earl Monroe's 1967 national champions. On the football side, Robert Massey — himself a former NFL All-Rookie and Pro Bowl defensive back — now leads the Rams. Bill Hayes, the former N.C. Central and Florida A&M athletic director, previously served as WSSU's AD.
In office since July 1, 2024; first woman permanent chancellor in school history.
Served as interim chancellor 2023–24; returned to the provost role when Brown arrived.
Has directed the Red Sea of Sound since fall 2004; named president of the HBCU National Band Directors' Consortium.
Leads the Rams football program; a former NFL defensive back himself (drafted by the Saints in 1989, 1992 Pro Bowler with the Cardinals).
WSSU runs deep on ritual: every fall the new class walks through the 1930s archways to be inducted into the Ram Family, and every September 28 the founder gets his wreath. Fall 2023 undergrads were 83% Black with 63% on Pell Grants, which is exactly why the school's social-mobility rankings land so hard — this is a campus of first-generation students being moved up the ladder. There are 100+ student organizations, the News Argus student paper, and a homecoming week the whole city feels. Football Saturdays happen at Bowman Gray Stadium, a one-of-a-kind venue the Rams share with a NASCAR short track — the stands still fill when the CIAA rivals come to town.