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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 on Street Storytelling | The Art of Storytelling Show )〕 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."〔(In the footsteps of Du Bois | Harvard Gazette )〕 ==Youth and early career== Raised in the boisterously revivalist African Methodist Episcopal church of the 1920s and 1930s, young Hugh was the grandson of a slave who heard tales of his grandfather's slavery from his father, who was a devout Christian. "My daddy wore the Bible out with his eyes," he relates, and the imprint remained through the son's own career as Brother Blue. The Hills lived in a poor area in Cleveland, Ohio as one of the few black families in their neighborhood. Brother Blue recalled his childhood as a rough time, saying "I'm like a flower who grew up in rocky soil." During Sunday church services, Blue found his voice telling stories, carrying this art forward into Sunday school sessions he taught after prayer.〔(The Story of Brother Blue )〕 Blue's storytelling career began with the tales he told his beloved retarded younger brother Thomas who was unable to read and write. Unable to say "Hugh" clearly, Thomas spoke his elder brother's name with a sound close to the word "Blue," a sobriquet which came to reflect Brother Blue's personal journey and in turn imbued his persona some of his public stories of his brother Thomas. History records that Thomas died young in an institution. Brother Blue's versions tell of how Thomas was "special" and mostly wanted to fly, so he climbed on the roof of the house and fell to his death. Blue muses, "Thomas...he thought he could fly, he thought could fly, so he tried." Especially in the middle portion of his career, Brother Blue would often explain that, ever grieving, he was still looking for his brother, and "he might be you." Entering Harvard on scholarship, Brother Blue won the undergraduate Boylston Prize for his recital of a speech penned and originally orated by Haitian slave rebellion leader Toussaint L'Ouverture. He subsequently won the Walt Whitman International Media Competition for delivering selections from The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Inspired by American Civil Liberties attorney Clarence Darrow of Scopes Trial, son of an abolitionist family, Brother Blue initially intended to apply to law school in order to become "the black Clarence Darrow." However his storytelling calling brought him successfully to Yale School of Drama's graduate school instead before obtaining his doctorate in Divinity from the Union Institute.〔(The Age-Old Teachings and Joyful Beseechings of Brother Blue | News | The Harvard Crimson )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Brother Blue」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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