About the OLBA Network
In 1873, Christian Frederick Cole matriculated at the University of Oxford as a non-collegiate student and subsequently graduated in 1876. He was Oxford’s first Black graduate. In 1833, he became the first Black African to practise law in the English Courts. In 1907, Alaine Locke became the first Black American Rhodes Scholar and studied philosophy, Greek, and Literae Humaniores. In 1909, Antiguan James Arthur Harley, who had previously studied law, classics and languages at Howard, Yale and Harvard, became the first Black person to graduate from Oxford with a degree in anthropology. In 1913, George Frederick Hall, of Tobagonian descent, became the first Black person to graduate from Lincoln College with a degree in engineering. In 1935, Kofoworola Moore became the first Black African woman to graduate from Oxford and her close friend who had also studied at Oxford, Stella Thomas, became, in 1933, the first Black African woman to be called to the English bar.
The Oxford Law Black Alumni Network (‘OLBA’) is a tribute to the likes of Cole, Locke, Harley, Hall, Moore, and Thomas who surmounted multifarious obstacles to pursue their intellectual interests at Oxford. Founded in 2020 by postgraduate law students, OLBA’s mission is to support and help build relationships between Black students and alumni of Oxford Law Faculty, with a view to the establishment of a global professional network.
The group is run on LinkedIn. If you would like to join, please follow the link below.
