A pioneer of the stage and the classroom who bridged the gap between Hollywood's gritty 1970s cinema and the halls of academia, Robert Kya-Hill died on May 31, 2026, in New Rochelle, New York, at the age of 95. He was a distinguished actor, director, and educator best known for his role in Shaft’s Big Score! and for founding the first Black Theater studies course at Hunter College. His influence was rooted in a presence that commanded both the stage and the lecture hall, defined by what a theater critic described as a "wonderfully resonant voice which he uses with discretion." This vocal control, as noted in A Directory of Shakespeare in Performance, was widely seen as a marker of his profound inner strength.

Kya-Hill did not merely participate in Black culture; he actively defined and taught it. By establishing the inaugural Black Theater studies curriculum at Hunter College, he provided an intellectual home for an art form he practiced globally. An interviewer once characterized him as a powerful and intense man with "strange, gentle eyes and a soft, commanding voice," noting that he achieved a rare level of communication through his steady presence and easy smile (ResearchGate). This voice served him in over 140 stage productions internationally, including celebrated turns in Othello, Purlie Victorious, and King Lear. His professional identity was solidified in 1961 when he added the prefix "Kya" to his name, a symbolic moment of self-actualization that preceded his most impactful work. Whether portraying the funeral director Cal Asby in the 1972 film Shaft’s Big Score! or serving as an artist-in-residence at the Western Australian Institute of Technology, he remained a man of deep conviction who stated simply, "I believe in Jesus" (The Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust).

Before his rise in New York and abroad, he was a child of the Jim Crow South, born Robert Hill in Whitaker, North Carolina. He spent his early years on farms across North Carolina and Virginia before moving to Harlem at age 12 with his mother, Fannie Williams Hill, who supported the family as a garment presser. He graduated as a silk screen major from the High School of Industrial Arts in 1948 and later served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. Stationed in Germany, he earned a National Defense Service Medal before his discharge in 1953. His commitment to his craft was recognized early when he received the Best Actor Award from the National Evangelical Film Foundation for his performance in Dark Valley (Black Film Center & Archive). He continued his own education well into his career, eventually earning a Master of Arts in Theater Education from Goddard College in 1991.

The physical vessels of his legacy are now preserved at the Schomburg Research Library in New York City and the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University. Beyond the archives, he is remembered as a mentor who guided young artists with "patience, conviction, and generosity" (Alexander-Rothwell Funeral Home). Kya-Hill leaves a legacy that transformed the personal journey of the Great Migration into a universal curriculum. He ensured that the stories of the Black stage were not merely performed for the moment, but codified for the future. He is survived by his wife, Sally, and their daughter, Bouqui.