Lecture Night: When Tobacco Road Reached Winston-Salem, Lecturer: Ed Southern

When Wake Forest opened its Reynolda Campus in 1956, Winston-Salem changed in ways big and small. For sports fans, Winston-Salem was now the western end of Tobacco Road, home to one of the Atlantic Coast Conference’s “Big Four” North Carolina schools — just as the ACC, the Big Four, and North Carolina were becoming synonymous with big-time college basketball.But why? Why did North Carolina go (and stay) crazy for college basketball, when the rest of the Old South states were (and are) crazy for college football? Join author, Wake Forest University graduate and lifelong Demon Deacon fan Ed Southern for a talk about the ties between Wake Forest’s move to Winston-Salem, the rise of ACC basketball, and the peculiar history of North Carolina within the South.