Dr. Hugh Morgan Hill
| Brother Blue | |
|---|---|
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Photo by Pete Lee
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| Born |
Hugh Morgan Hill July 12, 1921 Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | November 3, 2009 (aged 88) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Occupation | Storyteller, actor, educator |
| Spouse(s) | Ruth Edmonds Hill |
| Website | www.brotherblue.com |
Hugh Morgan Hill, (born Cleveland, Ohio on July 12, 1921, died Cambridge, Massachusetts November 3, 2009) who performed as Brother Blue was an African American educator, storyteller, actor, musician, street performer and living icon in Boston, in Cambridge, at Harvard University, MIT, and in the global oral storytelling community. After serving as First Lieutenant from 1943 to 1946 in the segregated United States Army in World War II and being honorably discharged, he received a BA from Harvard College in 1948 (cum laude in Social Relations), was accepted into the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) before transferring to receive a MFA from the Yale School of Drama and a Ph.D. (Divinity with pastoral sacred storytelling) from the Union Institute, having delivered his doctoral presentation at Boston's Deer Island Prison, accompanied by a 25-piece jazz orchestra, with a video recording for his dissertation committee's further consideration. While performing frequently at U.S. National Storytelling Festivals and flown abroad by organizations and patrons from England to Russia and the Bahamas, Brother Blue regularly performed on the streets around Cambridge, most notably in Harvard Square. He was the Official Storyteller of Boston and of Cambridge by resolutions of both city councils, a most unusual honor, doubled.
Brother Blue was a 2009 recipient of the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal from the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, named for William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, the first African American to earn a Harvard PhD in 1895. Brother Blue's award was accepted posthumously on his behalf by his spouse, Ruth Edmonds Hill, oral historian at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, on December 4, 2009, sadly a bare month after his death, for what Henry Louis Gates, Jr. cited as "his desire to build a better world, one story at a time." In his performances and in private communications, Brother Blue frequently exhorted people to tell "stories that change the world," with the combination caveat-encouragement, "We want a story from your heart. If it's not from your heart, don't tell it."
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