Bermuda’s recent commemoration of the life of Nelson Mandela provided an occasion for pioneering civil rights activist Georgine Hill to call for unity in the Island.

Now 95, Ms Hill, an early foe of segregation in Bermuda, offered to help fund the tribute to South Africa’s anti-apartheid hero — also 95 when he died on December 5.

Calling himself “moved” by the offer from someone just out of hospital for pneumonia, event coordinator Glenn Fubler said he’d told Ms Hill the event had already been covered by sponsors.

However, in discussing Mandela’s legacy with her, Mr Fubler said the veteran activist had voiced her concern at “the high degree of rancour among various sectors in our society and the resultant polarisation of the community”.

Recalling Ms Hill’s picketing of Bermuda’s segregated establishments in 1952, alongside her husband Hilton Hill Sr and others, Mr Fubler said she had demonstrated “a spirit that is not unlike that of Nelson Mandela — and this explains her passion in the face of health challenges”.

“Her example reminds us that we all have something to offer each other, no matter the circumstances,” added Mr Fubler, who said Ms Hill’s worry was that “many in our community don’t seem to be appreciating Madiba’s legacy”.

Meeting with The Royal Gazette at her Warwick home, in the same room where local activists had quietly gathered some 60 years ago, Ms Hill echoed those concerns.

“I think one of our big problems is that there are still a lot of people who don’t know what they should,” she said.

“They have been so quieted that they don’t know that what goes on is not what needs to go on. Payback will not work. Bermuda is too small a place to have a division. In order to do the best and get the best, we have to come together, led by the best.”

Born and educated in Boston, Ms Hill said she counted herself lucky to grow up in circumstances profoundly different from black Bermudian contemporaries, who were raised under segregation.

“I guess I was young enough to think it was fun to be fighting, because I thought it was so stupid,” said Ms Hill of Bermuda’s entrenched discrimination.

“I still think it’s stupid,” she added. “It was in my blood to fight those things.”

Coming to the Island with Mr Hill in 1941, Ms Hill soon ran afoul of the strictly divided social order, recalling: “The first time I received it was at Trimingham’s — I went in to buy something, I was standing and waiting at the counter, and just as I was about to be waited upon, a white woman came into the shop. The person there turned immediately to serve her.”

The clerk merely “looked embarrassed” when she spoke up — but didn’t come back to her.

Well-versed in black history, as well as the revolutionary background of Boston where the anti-slavery movement gained early currency, Ms Hill soon organised with like-minded individuals on the Island.

“I grew up without segregation, but I was educated in black history and became very aware of what was going on down in the South. That’s one of the reasons my great-grandfather, John J Smith, went up to the North to see what he could do, because he was born free — and he was born long before the Civil War in the US.”

Bermuda’s segregation, clearly advertised by local theatres, was something she found “incredibly ridiculous”, she said.

“We came back determined to do something about it. We started picketing and I was writing letters to the newspaper.”

Buoyed by other activists who organised as the Progressive Group, the movement toppled organised segregation in Bermuda with the 1959 Theatre Boycotts.

“1959 was the end of a long struggle,” said Ms Hill, who had carried placards on Front Street informing tourists of Bermuda’s colour divide at the start of the decade.

She recalled “underground” meetings with others at a Burnaby Street studio owned by her husband — and threats.

“One of our members was in the bank one day, and one of the oligarchy came up to her and said: ‘We know what you’ve been doing — you’d better stop, or you’ll lose your mortgage’,” Ms Hill recalled.

The group took to meeting at the Hill residence, where Ms Hill continues to live by Spice Hill Road.

The group was notorious for a pamphlet entitled ‘An Analysis of Bermuda’s Social Ills’, put together with the help of fellow protester David Critchley, which circulated in the build-up to the 1959 boycotts.

Bermuda’s civil rights battles of later years, in which Mr Mandela’s example became increasingly prominent, was taken up by later generations of activists.

Ms Hill said Mandela’s decision to eschew “payback” after languishing in prison for 27 years needed to be remembered and followed.

Asked if she remained politically active, Ms Hill replied: “As much as I can be.”

“You know, when you’re brought up to believe that separation and inequality are a sin, you fight it everywhere that it is,” she said.