Newnham’s first five students, 1871

The earliest student intake was all-white, but BAME women soon joined the women’s colleges, beginning with an Indian student, Nolini Bonnerjee, who entered Girton in 1889 (her three sisters followed her to Cambridge soon after). Gloria Carpenter, whose portrait you can see upstairs in the library, was the first black woman to graduate from the University, but she was following in the footsteps of the first black woman to study at the University, Amy King, who came to Girton from Trinidad in 1903.