The Rev. E.V. Hill was the pastor of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles. He rose from poverty in Texas to become a confidant of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and a power within one of the nation's largest African American denominations. Hill was known as a preacher whose sermons could thunder with righteousness even as he could listen with a pastor's heart. Bishop Charles E. Blake, pastor of West Angeles Cathedral in Los Angeles and a leader in another predominantly African American denomination, the Church of God in Christ, called Hill "one of the most significant personalities in the clergy over the past 30 or 40 years." "He was a great preacher, a tremendous preacher," Blake said, "and a common man's theologian."

• excerpted from his obituary