Abram Hill

Early years and education

Abram Hill was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 20, 1910, and spent half of his childhood there. At the age of seven he appeared in a Morehouse College Theatre production. In 1925, the family moved to Harlem, New York, and at 13 years of age Hill attended De Witt Clinton High School. After completing high school, he enrolled at City College of New York for two years and subsequently graduated with a B.A. from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, in 1937; before graduating he secured a job in drama with the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), where he directed productions with male youths. He majored in Theater Arts at Lincoln, and after graduating was hired as an assistant in the university's drama department.

Hill returned to New York a year later and joined the Federal Theater Project as a script reader. While working in this group, he wrote his plays Stealing Lightning and Hell's Half Acre. These plays would later be produced by the Unity Players of the Bronx, which eventually helped him earn the Theresa Helbrun Scholarship at the New School for Social Research, studying under John Gassner and Erwin Piscator. His work mostly comprised reading plays for production. He wrote some of his own plays during this period, including On Strivers' Row, Walk Hard, and Liberty Deferred.