Robert Hill is Professor Emeritus of History at UCLA where also served as Editor-in-Chief of the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers Project. The project has been housed on campus at the James S. Coleman African Studies Center since 1977. Hill’s interest in Garvey began in high school when he wrote an essay about him and won a prize for it. After winning the prize, Hill began meeting dozens of Garvey followers, also known as Garveyites, in his native country, Jamaica. Hill is internationally recognized as a leading authority on the life of Garvey and the history of the Garvey movement. In recent years he has received invitations to speak on Garvey from institutions throughout the United States, as well as the Caribbean, England and Africa. He was guest curator of the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Marcus Garvey Centenary Exhibition at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library, and was an advisor to the government of Jamaica on its Garvey centennial.
In addition to investing twenty-five years on the UCLA faculty, Hill previously held appointments at Dartmouth College (1970-72), the Institute of the Black World, Atlanta (1970-72), and Northwestern University, Evanston (1972-77). In 2010, he co-edited with Edmond Keller, Trustee for the Human Community: Ralph J. Bunche, the United Nations, and the Decolonization of Africa. A new edition of his The Rastafari Bible is to be published by Harper Collins of San Francisco. In addition, as the literary executor of the estate of the late C.L.R. James, Hill recently released You Don’t Play with Revolution: The Montreal Lectures of C.L.R. James (A.K. Press, 2010).
