December 5, 1833

James M. Hinds was born in New York. Hinds was an Arkansas politician during the Reconstruction era, serving as a representative to the Arkansas constitutional convention of 1868 and to the U.S. Congress upon Arkansas’s readmission to the Union. As a representative, Hinds helped introduce a bill for the sale of what is now Hot Springs National Park, aided in establishing agricultural colleges, and promoted the interests of African-American soldiers. He also taught enfranchised black men about their newly acquired rights. His assassination by a Ku Klux Klan member was deemed politically motivated but probably not premeditated. He is one of the six members in the history of the U.S. Congress to have been murdered, as well as the highest-ranking government official to be killed in any state during Reconstruction.