Robert A. Hill papers, 1933-2001

Robert A. Hill is Research Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Born in Jamaica, he was educated at the elite Roman Catholic Jesuit-run high school for boys in Kingston, St. George's College. He studied at the University of London; the University of Toronto; and the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. In 1971, he moved with his family to Atlanta, Georgia, to take up a position as a Research Fellow at the Institute of the Black World. The following year he moved to Evanston, Illinois, where he was appointed Associate Professor in the Department of African-American Studies at Northwestern University.

Since 1977 he has been at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he established and is the Editor-in-Chief of The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers Project, within the James S. Coleman African Studies Center.

In 1989 he was appointed Literary Executor of C.L.R. James, the West Indian author, Marxist historian, and Pan-African political activist. He is the recipient of many awards, including the Lyman H. Butterfield Award for Distinguished Contribution to Documentary Editing; the Miriam Matthews Award for Outstanding Contribution to the African American Community; the Carter G. Woodson Award for Black History; and The Gold Musgrave Medal of the Institute of Jamaica for Distinguished Contribution to History.

Professor Hill has served as an important member of several advisory committees for various documentary projects, including the W.E.B. Du Bois Film Project, Scribe Video Center, Philadelphia; the Schomburg Commission for the Preservation of Black Culture, New York; AHarlem Renaissance: The Art of Black America, The Studio Museum in Harlem Exhibition; The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project, Stanford University.

He was most recently involved as executive consultant in the making of the film, Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind, produced for PBS and The American Experience series at WGBH-Boston. He is the author of numerous essays and books, and to date has edited ten volumes of The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers, published by the University of California Press since 1983. The first part of the concluding series of the overall edition--the Caribbean Series--will be published starting in Fall 2002. Professor Hill is also the editor of two forthcoming volumes--The Rastafari Bible: JAH Version and Lion Zion: Marcus Garvey and the Jews.