Wayne State University
Michigan
1868
Formerly known as “the College of the City of Detroit” and “Wayne University”
When Detroit Junior College became a four-year college named the “College of the City of Detroit” in 1923 and school colors were needed, the college’s students selected dark olive green and old gold. By the late 1940s, however, the colors had lightened and brightened to Kelly green and yellow gold, according to Our College Colors (1949) by Henry L. Snyder.
The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) may have assigned the College of the City of Detroit a hood lined “green” with an old gold chevron in the 1920s, but this information did not appear in an official IBAC list until 1969. The green must have been a dark shade because a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the university’s hood lining as forest green with an old gold chevron. “Forest green” is a medium to dark shade of green.
The College of the City of Detroit’s colors in the 1920s were dark olive green and old gold. Unfortunately, the Intercollegiate Bureau had already assigned a hood lined dark olive green with an old gold chevron to Western Maryland University (today McDaniel College) and may have used the terms “green” and “forest green” to hide that fact. Here an inverted chevron has been used to circumvent this problem.