The exhibition will showcase a collection of photographic portraits celebrating centuries of black students at Cambridge from 1745 to the present day.

Visitors will see rare archive images of Black Cantabs including the first black British army officer and the first the first East African woman to be admitted to the English bar, as well as more familiar faces from the present day, such as Bond actress Naomie Harris, writer Zadie Smith and Diane Abbott MP. They will also enjoy newly commissioned portraits of Black Cantabs including classical composer Errollyn Wallen and playwright Justina Kehinde Ogunseitan.

The portraits will be displayed on the University Library’s Royal Corridor, the first time that visitors will be able to enjoy open access to this part of the University Library.

Black Cantabs: History Makers runs from 1 October to 22 December at the University Library, before touring the University and Colleges. It builds on the painstaking research project undertaken by the Black Cantabs Society, the members of which are students, staff and alumni of the University dedicated to telling the lost or forgotten stories of Cambridge’s black students.

Cambridge as a black student

Long-serving Member of Parliament Diane Abbott is an alumna of Newnham College. Talking of her experience applying to and studying at Cambridge, she says: "I was taken on a school trip to Cambridge and I thought it was amazing, with all these young men and women with their striped Cambridge scarves - to me they looked like princes and princesses - so it became an aspiration of mine to go there."

"I was passionate about history – and was able to do a dissertation on the post-Civil War reconstruction in the United States, but apart from that, there was no possibility of learning anything about black history or the black contribution to British society. I think that it would be better if the course acknowledged more of the black contribution to British society and British politics."

"I’ve had young people come to me for advice about going to Oxford or Cambridge. I would say, definitely go there, I would say hold onto your values. People react in different ways; some people get completely swept up and forget who they are and where they have come from, but with others it just reinforces our sense of who we are and what we believe in."

She encourages alumni to visit the exhibition and remarks "it's a great honour to be part of it."