He was one of the earliest black scholars and for Queens' College he was the first black student.
He matriculated in 1847 and left around 1850 and studied moral philosophy
and he came with his family
because he was trying to fundraise for the abolition of slavery
and he was funded by the abolitionists to study.
Soon after he left for Liberia because now it was like a free country for the
freed slaves and he worked in Liberia for 20 years as a professor in the
University of Liberia and also as a priest and he lived in Liberia for the
next 20 years but at the end of his life he moved back to to the US and
he continued working as a priest and also publishing in his field
people like Du Bois, he's a prominent scholar who studied in Harvard, have
referred to Alexander Crummell a lot in their work in especially in his main
work The Souls of Black Folk he talks a lot and having been inspired by Alexander Crummell.
As Black Cantabs we find that despite the work he did
he's still considered less prominent yet he did so
much in his field as a moral philosopher and also even within Black Studies I
think he is probably the father as Du Bois refers to him as the
father of that thinking and in the mentor of many people like Du Bois.
We are finding other people, maybe two others or three others who came earlier
than him but then they we can't find records of having matriculated and graduated.
Those are the challenges of researching black
people then in the archive because of the politics of race the politics of
knowledge but Alexander Crummell still remains the first black person
to matriculate and graduate at Queens' College.
The Black Cantabs Research Project was
started in 2015, myself and my other co-founders and we saw the need to start
documenting ourselves and those black alumni who've come to Cambridge before
us so that future generations of black students who come to Cambridge don't
have to feel the loneliness and isolation that you do because they
will see themselves they will see a history of other black students who
studied in Cambridge.
So Efua Sutherland is a playwright, she's Ghanaian in origin,
she studied at Homerton College and one of her legacies is that she actually
helped to found the study of African performance theatricality and she had
helped to establish modern Ghanaian theatre.
She had a cherished relationship with the late great Maya Angelou during the
years for Maya Angelou was actually living in Ghana in the 1960s.
Her most important work was a play that she wrote called Edufa.
Edufa is read all across the continent; acted, enacted and reacted in plays.
I think the reason that it has such a broad resonance is because it is
rooted in the community from which it emerges and therefore it has salience
all across the African continent but it is read far beyond that,
there's a street in the Netherlands called a Efua Sutherlandstraat and so this is a work
that is just one of those books that is just cherished and understood and
resonates with people on such a massive scale and that just is a testimony to
her genius but also to our ability to tap into the most important parts of human character.
Getting the the black female alumni I must say
has been much much easier than the men and sadly that's because the
women were so few, women only went to three colleges before the 1970s.
For instance the first black woman to study at Queens' was Amma.
She did a degree in medical sciences with a focus on gynecology and obstetrics.
She works in London as an obstetrician and gynaecologist and
recently I think in 2018 the College honoured her as a life honorary fellow you
which is one of the most distinguished awards for what she did
because when she was at Queens' in 1980 she was first the first black woman to
study at Queens', she was the first woman to captain any athletics team in the
history of the University. I think that's that's a big, that's a huge achievement.
What else did she do?
She got a full blue, so she has one of those really amazing jackets,
you have to do really intense qualifications to get, so really impressive.
And it's because of people like Amma and
I'm glad that the College did research about her, I was working with Marissa when
they did a whole magazine about, an alumni magazine cover with Amma and
I can remember how excited there was to see the magazine like:
'Oh my god somebody studied here, this Ghanaian British woman, so like yeah I just met here. Wow!'
So that's the more reason why this project is so important, it's so that
those AHA moments have to be normalised, it's not like:
'Oh my god this happened. No it's like I know this was here and I can do it because they did it!'
Right, underlining how important representation is in a wider context and
at a personal level the reason why I applied to Queens' College was because I
saw Njoki on the website, I saw her around, I knew her work, I was interested in her work.
I saw myself at Queens' because I saw someone like myself at Queens'
and that's why the work is so important I think.
Yes and I'm glad she came to Queens' and became the president of the Black Cantabs,
but for me it also shows why we need representation because if we have
more people that prospective students can get on a website and see
more black and brown people they'll feel actually that list is for people like me
and they're likely to apply to Cambridge but many times, many very brilliant students
don't apply to Cambridge because they just see people
don't look like themselves and think that's not my place and I'm not going to have a
good time and I don't want to be there.
So we've curated the work and we're
really interested in exhibiting the work all across Cambridge in multiple
different forms, we're really interested in larger-than-life exhibitions outside
of the Senate House for example and working with each College to make sure
that not only are they aware of their Black Cantabs that they're highlighting
and showcasing those legacies at every opportunity whether it's portraits and
pictures or other kinds of plaques some kinds of memorial we're really
interested in working with each College in order to do that. But if you're not in
Cambridge you can also still investigate the work that we've done because we've
made it publicly available at our website: www.blackcantabs.com