Walter B. Hill Jr. | Archivist, scholar, 59

Walter B. Hill Jr., 59, a scholar of African American history who was dedicated to making materials preserved in the National Archives more accessible to scholars and the public, died July 29 of leukemia at Washington Hospital Center.

In a three-decade career, he was a senior archivist and the National Archives' first subject-area specialist in Afro-American history.

"He developed the most extensive contacts of any area experts I've ever seen at the National Archives," said Michael J. Kurtz, assistant archivist for records services at the National Archives.

Thanks to Mr. Hill's efforts, editors, filmmakers, documentarians, scholars and historians investigating the African American experience "were able to navigate their way through the system," Kurtz said.

He published articles, guides and essays on the subject. For an essay that ran in a 1996 issue of the Negro History Bulletin, he ferreted out mostly forgotten information about efforts beginning in the late 1800s to compensate former slaves by granting them a pension. The efforts died out in the 1920s.

- Washington Post