After recognising a sinister Latin inscription on the sculpture in Jesus College, Cambridge, I began a campaign to return it
I remember seeing the gold plaque in Latin on the stand of the okukor – a bronze sculpture of a cockerel – in the dining hall when I started at Jesus College, Cambridge, in 2013. I was a classics student at the time, and had secured a place on the four-year classics degree that enabled students from more diverse backgrounds to learn Latin and Greek; I was one of very few black classicists at Cambridge. As my language skills developed, I noticed the Latin on the sculpture’s plaque used the verb rapere (“to seize”), instead of dare (“to give”) – suggesting it did not arrive at the college in a positive way. As I began to investigate, I learned of its bloody history and, as somebody of Jamaican descent, my interest in returning the okukor to its rightful home was immediately piqued.
Related: Bronze cockerel to be returned to Nigeria by Cambridge college
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