Oxford Inscriptions: Christian Cole
CHRISTIAN COLE (D. 1885)
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.
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OXFORD BLACK OXFORD UNTOLD STORIES
This plaque was put up by University College, Oxford in Logic Lane and unveiled on 14 October 2017.
Christian Frederick Cole was born in Sierra Leone in West Africa in 1851/2. He was the son of the Revd James Cole, who was one of the first Africans to be ordained into Anglican orders.
He attended the grammar school in Freetown, and In 1873 at the age of 21 he was matriculated at the University of Oxford as a non‑collegiate student. His entry in Alumni Oxonienses reads:
Cole, Christian Frederick, 2s. James, of Waterloo, Sierra Leone, cler. NON-COLL., matric. 19 April 1873, aged 21; B.A. 1876, bar.-at-law, Inner Temple, 18 April 1883. See Foster's Men at the Bar.
The office for Unattached Students was then in the Clarendon Building, and from December 1874 to April 1877 Cole earned a small stipend overseeing the collection of books held there for students who had no college.
He was awarded a Third in Classical Moderations in December 1874 and a Fourth in the final classical examination in 1876, and his B.A. Honours degree was conferred on Thursday 14 December in the latter year.
On 30 November 1877 Cole was admitted to University College, unusually as neither a student nor a fellow.
He had joined the Oxford Union Society back in 1874, but only started speaking in debates between 1877 and 1879.
This caricature was published by Thomas Shrimpton of Broad Street, Oxford in his “Great Guns of Oxford” series. It shows Cole strumming a banjo, and the words of the nursery rhyme Old King Cole are written underneath. He is wearing his mortarboard and gown and the type of stripy trousers worn by black minstrels. He is evidently performing outside the Mitre Hotel, as it was owned by the Venables family during his time in Oxford and the start of their name can be seen over the door. Shrimpton published two other caricatures of Cole, and all can be seen in the Bodleian Library.
On Sunday 17 June 1877 Cole spent the day in Woodstock, reading the lesson in the parish church at the morning and evening services, and in the afternoon talking first to the children at the Sunday School and then to the workhouse inmates about mission work in his birthplace of Sierra Leone. Jackson's Oxford Journal reported about it on the following Saturday:
Cole returned to Sierra Leone in 1879/80 and then moved to London in 1881, where he continued with his legal studies. He passed a satisfactory examination in Roman Law at the Inner Temple in the Trinity Examination of 1881 and was was called to the English Bar on 18 April 1883.
On 8 July 1883 Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper reported that Cole was fined for being drunk and disorderly in Bedford Row, London, wrongly describing him as an East Indian:
Cole found it difficult to obtain work in London and in 1885 he moved to the island of Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania), where apparently he took the temperance pledge. He died there from smallpox on 7 December 1885 at the age of 33.
See also
- University College, Oxford: Christian Cole’s Univ contacts
- University College, Oxford: Black History Month, 1879
- History Extra: “Christian Frederick Cole: England’s first black barrister”
- On History (Institute of Historical Research):: “The Re-Imagining of Christian Frederick Cole”
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Cole, Christian Frederick (1851/2–1885) by Philip Burnett
- Wikipedia: Christian Cole (barrister)
- University of Oxford: “New plaque celebrates Oxford's first black student in 1870s”
- BBC News: Christian Cole: “Oxford University's first black student”