McDowell County town marks first memorial to Black World War I veterans
Kimball’s World War I Memorial still stands as the first U.S. memorial to African American veterans of the war, built after 16 Black veterans pushed McDowell County to act.
The Kimball World War I Memorial still stands on U.S. Highway 52 in McDowell County as the first memorial in the United States built to honor African American World War I veterans. The site is listed in historic records as the World War Memorial, also known as the Kimball War Memorial Building, and it was designed by Welch architect Hassel T. Hicks.
Its roots trace to a mid-1920s petition from 16 Black veterans who went to the McDowell County Commission and pressed for a public memorial. That local push turned into a building project completed in 1928, with dedication ceremonies held on Feb. 11, 1928. Contemporary accounts said the crowd that day was the largest McDowell County had ever seen.
The memorial matters in McDowell County because the county sent so many Black men into the war. One source says about 1,500 Black servicemen from McDowell County enlisted during World War I, part of a national wave of more than 400,000 Black troops. Those soldiers served in a segregated military that often confined Black troops to labor and support roles, even as the 92nd and 93rd Divisions saw combat. The 93rd Division served under the French army, and 171 of its soldiers later received France’s Legion of Honor.
That history makes Kimball more than a small-town landmark. In a county shaped by coal camps, railroad communities and Black Appalachian labor, the memorial places Black military service in public view instead of leaving it on the margins of the record. It gives McDowell County a permanent marker for a story that connects local families to a national fight over race, service and remembrance.
The building still serves as a community center and remembrance site, keeping that history active rather than locked away as a relic. It is also documented by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, the National Park Service, the West Virginia Humanities Council, West Virginia University and the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education, all of which help keep Kimball’s place in the state’s Black veteran history visible. In McDowell County, the memorial remains one of the clearest public acknowledgments that Black Appalachian service belongs at the center of the county’s story.
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