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Carolina Curious: What is a Demon Deacon?

There were actually several other iterations of the Wake Forest University mascot before the Demon Deacon caught on — including a tiger back in the 1890s. AP Photo/Chuck Burton

There were actually several other iterations of the Wake Forest University mascot before the Demon Deacon caught on — including a tiger back in the 1890s. AP Photo/Chuck Burton

Wake Forest University’s mascot, the Demon Deacon, rides into games on a motorcycle wearing a black and gold tuxedo, and a top hat on his oversized head. For this month's Carolina Curious, WFDD’s Amy Diaz spoke with an archivist at the university to find out how it came to represent the school.

According to WFU's Director of Special Collections and Archives Tanya Zanish-Belcher, there were actually several other iterations of the mascot before Demon Deacon caught on — including a tiger back in the 1890s. 

“We were known as Wake Forest, the Baptists since we were a Baptist School, the Fighting Deacons, the Deacon Warriors, and the Old Gold and Black," she said.

These names were all used in the school newspaper and written by student journalists. Zanish-Belcher said she thinks the editors and reporters at the time were looking for ways to describe the foo

Amy Diaz began covering education in North Carolina’s Piedmont region and High Country for WFDD in partnership with Report For America in 2022. Before entering the world of public radio, she worked as a local government reporter in Flint, Mich. where she was named the 2021 Rookie Writer of the Year by the Michigan Press Association. Diaz is originally from Florida, where she interned at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and freelanced for the Tampa Bay Times. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of South Florida, but truly got her start in the field in elementary school writing scripts for the morning news. You can follow her on Twitter at @amydiaze.

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