ATHENS, Ohio – To honor Veterans Day, the Mount Zion Black Cultural Center and the Southeast Ohio History Center will unveil their first-ever exhibit honoring Black veterans of Athens County.
The exhibit at the history center will feature items from the Civil War, World War II, the Vietnam War as well as reenactors of historical Black figures, biographies of Black veterans made by the Athens Middle School Andrew Jackson Davidson Club and support from the Athens County Boy Scouts of America.
Exhibit curator and Mount Zion Black Cultural Center board member Elizabeth (Libby) Williams said she drew on her personal experiences and family ties in putting together the exhibit.
“It started with my great-great-grandfather Nimrod Goins, who was buried in the State Street Cemetery [and]o a Civil War veteran. He was with the 5th US Colored Troops,” Williams said. “My maternal and paternal uncles, and my father, also served in World War II.”
While trying to find a way to honor her relatives, she looked more closely at current Athens Veterans Day traditions — specifically the posters lining Court Street, which feature photos and details commemorating local servicemembers.
“The families put the posters up, so I was going to [buy a poster],” She said. “But then I thought, there’s so many more [veterans] that probably have no family to get them [a poster] or don’t have the means, because it costs $300 a poster.”
From there, the plan for a specific exhibit honoring the little-known Black veterans of Athens County emerged.
According to Williams, her main goal is “to acknowledge the sacrifices of Black men of Athens County that have quietly been overlooked.”
Black residents of Athens County who served in international wars also faced battles in their own communities, including Athens. Williams also emphasized the Double V program during World War II as a critical moment for Black veterans.
“Black soldiers were fighting on two fronts,” she said. “One, they were fighting for the United States in World War II, and two, the Black Americans are [in the U.S.] saying, ‘Why are we being second-class citizens? We want to fight for our own history and for our children.’”
“I think World War II was a turning point for Black men in Athens. Most of them didn’t come back to Athens. There was no industry to support them,” Williams said.
The city’s primary private employer, McBee Systems — a major supplier of business forms from its founding in 1906 to its closure in 2005 — “didn’t hire Blacks,” she said. Black men had no place to work unless they worked for the university or they did some farming or laboring.”
With poor economic prospects in the area , Black residents moved farther north to find better prospects, contributing to the Great Migration, Williams said.
Decades after those departures — and with the arrival of new Black community members over time who call Athens County home — Williams hopes this exhibit will become an annual celebration of the lives and service of these oft-overlooked individuals.
“We’re going to cover as much as we can and apologize for what we leave out,” Williams said. “I’m sure we’ll miss some names and some stories. But we would like to get them all.”
In future years, Williams aims to expand the exhibit to include additional voices — as many as possible.
“[The exhibit] started really small, and it’s just exploded,” Williams said.
According to Williams, the central sponsor for the Veteran’s Day event is Michael Carpenter and Associates, as well as many supporters from within the Mt. Zion Cultural Center and the Southeast Ohio History Center.
If there was one thing people would take away from the exhibit, Williams hopes it is, “information and history.”
“I love history. I have a lot of stories to share, some of them funny, some of them not so funny,” she said. “I like to say, I think everybody thinks with a different perspective, and a lot of times, it’s just storytelling.”
The grand opening of “Black Veterans of Athens Ohio” will take place at the Southeast Ohio History Center on Nov. 11 at 24 W. State St. from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. with light refreshments. Guests will have an opportunity to talk with some of the event’s primary planners. Admission is free. The exhibit will remain open until Dec. 31 during regular open hours of the Southeast Ohio History Center.
