The UK’s first Black barrister who studied at Oxford

Despite making history twice, Christian Cole is not as well known as he should be

In 2017, the University of Oxford unveiled a plaque dedicated to a man named Christian Cole.

The dedication read: “The first black African to be awarded an Oxford degree and to practise law in an English court was made a member of University College Oxford in 1877.” But there is a lot more to his story.

Up until 1871, students who wished to study at Oxford had to be Anglican, as Queen Elizabeth I had made it a requirement for students to swear oath to the monarch and church in 1581. This obstacle was removed by the university in 1854 in principle – but in reality, many colleges remained closed to non-Anglicans.

It wasn’t until 1871 that saw The Universities Tests Act pass in Parliament, which caused Oxford to accept people of all religions and none, thus widening the diversity of people attending the institution. Christian Cole arrived at the University of Oxford in 1873 from Sierra Leone, where he was the grandson of a slave and adopted son of a Church of England minister.

He arrived in Britain to study Classics at the height of colonialism, amid a dominating ideology that people of colour were inferior. Cole was a non-collegiate student, which was an arrangement set up to aid students who face financial hardships.

His fellow peers at the time included imperialist Cecil Rhodes and author Oscar Wilde, and while their legacies were remembered through statues and portraits, all that was documented of Cole were a few caricatures.

During his time at university, he was part of the debating society and his work was commended by Benjamin Jowett of Balliol, a translator of Plato and later, the university’s vice-chancellor. However, studying at Oxford can’t have been easy for Cole, with Dr Robin Darwall-Smith, an archivist at University College Oxford, telling the BBC: “For a lot of people he would have been the first black African they had ever encountered.”

There were accounts of people writing his last name as ‘coal’ on account of his skin, and he was made fun of for his singing. Despite this, he supplemented his income by giving music lessons to others. Despite facing adversity near daily, Cole successfully graduated from Oxford in 1877 and was made a member of University College.

In 1879, he published a poem entitled Reflections on the Zulu War, attacking British policy in the Zulu War and signed it as being by “A Negro, B.A., of University College”. In 1879, he was forced to leave England to return to Sierra Leone after not being able to pay off the debt he accrued during his studies. But he soon raised enough funds to return and pursue his dream of practising law.

In 1883, he became the first black African barrister to practice in English courts. Tragically, he died just two years later in 1885 of smallpox, aged just 33.

Despite his incredible achievements, Cole’s name is not well-known, with the plaque commemorating him only recently being erected. At the unveiling of the plaque, the BBC reported that the master of University College said the plaque should be “a symbol of our continued commitment to recognising and supporting the brightest students, whatever their backgrounds”.