Leslie Pinckney Hill

Leslie Pinckney Hill was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, on May 14, 1880. He attended public schools in East Orange, New Jersey, before graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in 1903. He earned a master’s degree a year later. 

Hill’s published works are the poetry collection The Wings of Oppression (The Stratford Co., 1921) and the play Toussaint L’ Ouverture, A Dynamic History (The Christopher Publishing House, 1928). Hill’s work has also been anthologized, most notably in James Weldon Johnson’s Book of American Negro Poetry (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922).

Johnson said of Hill’s verse: “[H]e writes in a quiet restrained scholarly tone, with a modicum of lyric ecstasy with never anything approaching abandon or a passionate break with decorum. His is philosophical rather than lyrical. All the poems in his first volume, ‘The Wings of Oppression’ (1921) are more or less in this vein. That this calmness of manner, however, does not imply lack of intensity is demonstrated by the serene power achieved in the sonnet ‘So Quietly.’” 

In addition to being a poet and playwright, Hill was also an educator and community leader and organizer. He started his career as an instructor of English and Education at Tuskegee University. In 1907, he went to Manassas Industrial Institute, where he took a position as principal. Six years later, he took his final position in education at Cheyney Training School, which he expanded into Cheyney Training School for Teachers (now, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania), an accredited teachers’ college. After his retirement, the college bestowed him with the title President-Emeritus. 

Hill died on February 15, 1960.