The Ali Hindy Story: A Muslim Immigrant in 20th Century America

Ali Hindy was among a handful of Muslims who joined thousands of Christians fleeing Syria in the 1890s, when the Ottoman Empire was crumbling, and Syria was mired in a depression. He was 12 years old when he sailed from Haifa with two boys and found his way through Europe to New York City. Ali Hindy drove a horse and wagon west with two goals: to find a wife and start a business. He married a woman who had been shunned by her family and started a general store, a bathhouse for coal miners and a movie theater in Bloody Mingo County, West Virginia. He sided with the United Mine Workers in their many battles with mine owners, befriended Devilance Hatfield of the Hatfield-McCoys Feud and survived an attack by the Ku Klux Klan. Ali Hindy proudly became an American citizen in 1924 but his children were raised Christian and learned nothing of Ali's religion, language or culture. That was left for his grandchildren and great-grandchildren to discover. His grandson, Steve Hindy, became a Middle East Correspondent for The Associated Press, based in Beirut and Cairo 1979-1984. He traveled to Ali's hometown, Sultan Yaqoub, met Ali's half-sister and other family members and cobbled together this story with help from Hindy cousins in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.