Wiley Hinds

Wiley Hinds was born to enslaved parents in Arkansas. His father bought him from his owner for $300. With just seventy-five cents in his pockets, he went to work as a farmer laborer in Tulare County, California. He worked for wages until he was twenty-nine years of age, and then began stock raising. Three years later he purchased eighty acres of land, upon which he built a home; he married Lucy McKinney, the couple had thirteen children. When he died, he owned 4,000 acres of land, including a prune ranch worth $1,000 per acre, fruit orchards, cattle and hog ranches, and city property in Oakland and Berkeley, valued at $200 per acre. Hines died in 1919. He and his wife are buried in a cemetery in Visalia, California.

Sources: University of California, Tulare Photograph Collection, Tulare County Library; Courtesy of Marian E. King: The Crisis Magazine (Jan. 1920).