Renowned Bermuda civil rights trailblazer, educator and artist Georgine Hill died yesterday, just five days shy of her 96th birthday.

Born in 1918 in desegregated Boston, Massachusetts, Mrs Hill and her husband, Bermudian hotelier and businessman Hilton Hill, helped organised the 1951 boycott of segregated Bermuda theatres — predating the more celebrated 1959 cinema boycott by eight years.

In a 2009 interview, Mrs Hill described the shock of encountering segregation when the couple arrived in Bermuda in 1941.

“I had no idea of things like Bermuda. I had never been segregated. I knew it wasn’t easy to get jobs in white firms in Boston but there was no problem going to school,” she said.

After discovering that “I couldn’t go to this restaurant and I couldn’t go to some of the theatres” — even while socialising with a wide circle of white friends — Mrs Hill said she became “determined to do something about it”.

“The whole thing was ridiculous,” she said.

For the daughter of Alfred and Mabel Russell, activism ran in the family.

Mrs Hill’s father counted firebrand Bostonian newspaper editor and activist William Monroe Trotter among his friends — as well as the author and activist W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.

“They were all of a similar social set,” said Mrs Hill’s grandson, Jay Butler. “The black educated community in Boston knew one another, and would get together.”

Mrs Hill’s great-grandfather George Franklin Grant, the son of former slaves, was the first black faculty member at Harvard.

Another great-grandfather, John Jay Smith, was active in the Underground Railway, helping slaves flee the South in the 1850s.

Her husband, who went on to become a Member of Colonial Parliament, died in 2000.

They have a son, Hilton (Buddy) Hill, and a daughter, Dr June Hill.

“It may sound strange to say I’m happy, but I feel so much joy and pride that she was my mother,” Dr Hill said last night. “She was such fun to be around, and probably the most interesting person I will ever know. She was like my best friend.”

A skilled painter of portraits and landscapes, Ms Hill tackled subjects such as local teacher and author Kenneth Robinson, civil servant Ruth Seaton James — and Otelia Cromwell, the first black graduate of Smith College, Massachusetts.

The Cromwell portrait still hangs at the college, where the alumnus is honoured with an annual Cromwell day.

“That was the last one she painted,” Dr Hill said. “It’s a lovely portrait — it’s one of my favourites.”

Mrs Hill was also highly educated, having attended what was then called the Girls Latin School in Boston, a prestigious school today known as Boston Latin Academy.

“My school was always integrated because in Boston slavery was repealed in the 1780s,” Mrs Hill recalled for a December interview with The Royal Gazette. “It was repealed long before Bermuda, or the South. So consequently, they were that far ahead.”

She later studied fine art at the Massachusetts College of Art, and met her husband while he attended Boston University. The couple married in 1940.

Meeting with fellow activists in Hamilton, and later in the couples’ Warwick home, the Hills handed out leaflets to black theatregoers “appealing to their dignity”, as she put it.

Although she said many people in Bermuda seemingly “didn’t think it was important enough to make sacrifice for”, Mrs Hill was able to use Actors’ Equity — the US union for actors — to persuade American actors to refuse to perform in segregated theatres.

“Because they were American actors, they were able to make appeals to authorities overseas,” explained journalist Meredith Ebbin. “The Bermudiana Theatre Club brought in repertory plays for the whole season from the US, and these actors were able to bring segregation to international attention.”

Although the Hills were acknowledged as trailblazers for the Progressive Group’s cinema boycotts of 1959 that toppled open segregation in Bermuda, Ms Ebbin said it was “important not to get the two mixed up”.

“Theatre was mostly for tourists. There were demonstrations, but then it mostly died down. The later boycotts were against the cinemas, which local people attended.”

Mrs Hill maintained a keen interest in the Island’s social progress and recently offered to finance the commemorations of the death of former South African president and anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela. She befriended the late filmmaker Errol Williams during his work on the documentary “When Voices Rise”, on the 1959 boycotts.

She volunteered for decades with Teen Services, serving as chairman of the organisation.

According to her daughter, Mrs Hill “had a strong belief that girls who became pregnant should go on with their education — that it should not be the end of their career”.

She was a founding member of the Bermuda Art Association and a vice-president of the Bermuda Society of Arts.

In 1993, Mrs Hill was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire, in recognition of her career as an artist and teacher.

An art teacher for 21 years, Mrs Hill at one time taught art at both Prospect Secondary School for Girls and St George’s Secondary School.

She was hailed as a pioneer of the art education programme in Government high schools.

“A great teacher and a great friend of mine,” recalled former student Patricia Hall. “She began in 1954 at the Girls’ Institute of Arts and Crafts before going to Prospect. She mentored students who became artists, like Joan Harvey Butterfield.”

Ms Hall said Mrs Hill, who dressed elegantly, brought sophistication to the classroom and “passed on her traits to others”.

“In school, she was a mother figure to us. She took us under her wings as if we were here children. She referred to the girls at Prospect as her girls.”

Mrs Hill won several Bermuda Arts Council Lifetime Achievement Awards for her painting, and helped sponsor the National Dance Foundation of Bermuda. She also belonged to Keep Bermuda Beautiful, the National Trust and the Lady Cubitt Compassionate Association.

“My mother came from a family which placed a lot of emphasis on social justice and giving back to the community,” Dr Hill said. “She believed in leaving the place a little better than she found it.”

A memorial service is expected for this weekend. Mrs Hill would have turned 96 on Saturday.