Hill, Leslie Pinckney (1880–1960)
A HARVARDUNIVERSITY–educated teacher and
poet from Lynchburg, Virginia. The son of Samuel
and Sarah Elizabeth Hill, he attended high school
in East Orange, New Jersey, and graduated in
- He began his studies at Harvard in 1899 and
graduated PHIBETAKAPPAin 1903. He stayed on
to earn his master’s degree in education in 1904.
Years later, in 1929, he received the D. Litt. from
LINCOLN UNIVERSITY, the alma mater of U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, WAR-
ING CUNEY,LANGSTONHUGHES, and EDWARD
SILVERA. A member of the Greek fraternity Kappa
Alpha Psi, Hill also was elected to membership in
Pi Gamma Mu, the social science honor society
founded in 1924. He enjoyed memberships in pro-
fessional societies such as the American Academy
of Political and Social Science and the Association
of Teachers of Colored Children. He also was an
active member of political organizations such as
the Committee on Total Disarmament and the
American Inter-Racial Peace Committee. He mar-
ried Jane Ethel Clark from Newark, New Jersey, in
June 1907 and the couple had six daughters.
Hill had a steady and accomplished career as
an educator. His first appointment was as a lec-
turer at TUSKEGEEINSTITUTEfrom 1904 through - He then began a six-year term as principal at
the Manassas Industrial School in Virginia. In
1913 he became the president of the Cheyney
Training School in Pennsylvania, the oldest histori-
cally black institution of higher education in
America. During his tenure the school, which was
a highly respected teacher’s training school when
he arrived, became Cheyney University. Hill was
its first president.
Hill’s career as a writer evolved during his
tenure at Cheyney. He published WINGS OFOP-
PRESSIONin 1921. TOUSSAINTL’ OUVERTURE,pub-
lished by The Christopher House in BOSTON,
appeared in 1928. Hill was anthologized in major
Harlem Renaissance collections of poetry. JAMES
WELDON JOHNSON included several of Hill’s
poems in THEBOOK OFAMERICANNEGROPO-
ETRYpublished by HARCOURT&BRACEin 1922.
In 1924 nine of his poems were published in NEW-
MAN IVEY WHITE and WALTERJACKSON’s AN
ANTHOLOGY OFVERSE BYAMERICANNEGROES.
This high number of works was exceeded only by
the entries for Paul Laurence Dunbar and
WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE. White and
Jackson offered high praise for Hill’s poems. In the
brief biographical profile and editorial comment in-
cluded in their anthology, they declared that the
majority of poems in Wings of Oppression“show a
quality of thought and an adequacy of expression
that rank them with the best contemporary poetry
written by Negroes.”
Hill’s poems reflect his forthright perspectives
on life, education, community, and spiritual con-
sciousness. His only volume of collected poems,
Wings of Oppression, included autobiographical
meditations, poems inspired by current events, and
works that blended high classical imagery with con-
temporary scenes of African-American life. Works
such as “Tuskegee” represented well the strong
faith of the Methodist Episcopal teacher who com-
posed them. “Wherefore this busy labor without
rest?” asked the speaker in the opening lines of the
Italian sonnet. “But what shall be the end, and
what the test?” he mused lines later. The sonnet
takes as its primary subject the industrial and train-
ing school founded in Alabama by BOOKER T.
WASHINGTON. As the poem closes, the narrator
delivers a memorable comment on the school’s mis-
sion and a veiled threat to those who might oppose
its important work for African Americans: “If all
our toilsome building is in vain, / Availing not to
set our manhood free, / If envious hate roots out
the seed we sow, / The South will wear eternally a
stain.” Another poem, “The Teacher,” reprinted in
the Johnson anthology, was a tidy narrative mod-
eled on a prayer. “Lord, who am I to teach the way /
To little children day by day, / So prone myself to go
astray?” asks the narrator. The next stanzas record
the teacher’s efforts to enlighten students about
knowledge, power, and love. Yet, because of his hu-
manity, and thus imperfection, the teacher ulti-
mately concludes that “if their guide I still must be /
Oh let the little children see / The teacher leaning
hard on Thee.” Hill also tackled pressing social is-
sues and explosive racial incidents such as LYNCH-
ING. One of Hill’s most sobering works was “So
Quietly,” a moving, jagged poem based on a 1919
lynching in Smithville, Georgia. The epigraph to
the poem is a lengthy excerpt from THENEWYORK
TIMESthat records the official note that the victim
“came to his death at the hands of unidentifiedHill, Leslie Pinckney 239