Black History at York St John – an archive display for Black History Month 2024

Come to the library to see our display of resources from our archive uncovering the history of early Black students at York St John.

Introduction

During its earlier history, St John’s College (as York St John was then known) educated male students who were primarily from Britain, and in many cases from the North of England. However, this all changed following World War Two when the college began to welcome a greater number of international students. Some visited for short periods from the University of London’s Institute for Education while others undertook a longer course of study. These students included a number of visitors from countries in Africa that were then colonies of the British Empire, including Nigeria and the Gold Coast (now part of Ghana).

St John’s College year photo (1956)

This photograph of 1954-56 year group at St John’s College includes four students from Nigeria. In his Principal’s Letter in the White Rose for that year, Principal Lamb highlights the positive impact of students from overseas: ‘our four Nigerians… have enriched our imagination and made precise our information concerning their own young and vigorous country’. He notes ‘We shall miss our friendly Nigerians next year. They could not have fitted more readily into our ways’.

White Rose magazine (1956)

This alumni magazine from 1956 includes profiles of several students, including one Lloyd Ebun Babatunde Ajayi, a student from Okene in Nigeria. Lloyd as already a trained teacher and came to St John’s on a “Staff of Teacher Training College Course” to study educational methods. He says that “Here he has been for a year thoroughly ‘at home’ with his numerous friends, and he will be sorry to leave them behind”. Elsewhere in the magazine, two of the other Nigerian students are named as J. Dania and A. S. Awani and are described as giving a lecture on “The Church and Education in Nigeria”, while Lloyd Ajayi gave a lecture on “Islam in Nigeria”.

White Rose magazine (1954)

Although both Ajayi and the Principal give a highly positive view of the international student experience in the 1956 White Rose, this earlier magazine offers a glimpse of an alternative experience. In 1953 a number of students from St John’s attended an International Summer School at the Leeds Institute of Education, aimed at furthering ‘international understanding’. As one of the exercises, students of different nationalities were asked to describe other nationalities’ characteristics, and the Nigerian students created the following, rather unflattering description of the English:

‘Think they themselves are only people who really matter, and that being English is sufficient grounds for superiority. Reserved. The Englishman is gentlemanly – when at home in England; is still overlord in Africa’.

Letter from the Principal regarding an international student (1953)

In this letter, Principal Lamb writes to the Ministry of Education to accept a student from Nigeria but mentions that St John’s is a Christian college, in case this affects the student’s placement since he is a Muslim. In the end, the Colonial Office did decide to place the student elsewhere, to Lamb’s disappointment, as he feels that study of the scriptures is essential to knowledge of English culture. Many of the students who did come to St John’s from Africa were Christians, perhaps contributing to Lamb’s view that they ‘fitted… readily into our ways’.