William D. Wiley was a civil rights activist and newspaper editor who worked in Providence, Rhode Island.
Wiley edited and published the Providence Chronicle, the only black newspaper in Rhode Island in its time.
Wiley was born in South Carolina and moved to Providence to live with his father and his second wife (servant of the prominent Rhode Island family, the Chafees) when his mother died.
Wiley worked briefly as the editor of religious publication The Burning Bush in Wisconsin, and he trained to be a minister in the late 1920s.
[1] In 1985 Olive and William Wiley were jointly inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame.