HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Every year around Veterans Day, Professor Josh Keck leads his Mountwest Community and Technical College students and other volunteers on a cleanup at Huntington’s forgotten cemetery.
There are several prominent burial grounds within the city, including Spring Hill Cemetery and Woodmere Memorial Park. The one Keck brings his volunteers to, however, is largely overlooked.
In a southeastern corner of the city, squeezed between a residential neighborhood and Interstate 64, lies a small clearing. Hundreds of graves, many of them unmarked, occupy the hilly terrain. The crumbling ruins of a small chapel reveal the decades of neglect this site has endured.
This is Bethel Memorial Park, Huntington’s only all-Black cemetery. Earlier this year, it received the honor of becoming the second Black cemetery in West Virginia to be listed individually on the National Register of Historic Places. (Read the nomination here.)
How Segregation Shaped Bethel Memorial Park
Throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, Black Americans experienced varying degrees of segregation in every aspect of their lives. To many, this discrimination even extended to death. Cemeteries, like many public spaces, were segregated based on race.
Some public cemeteries set aside small, undesirable sections for Black burials. Others prohibited Black people altogether, compelling them to establish their own separate burial grounds. These are a sad reminder of the nation’s racist past, but they also represent the determination of Black communities to treat their dead with the respect they deserve.
West Virginia was no stranger to this phenomenon. From the eastern panhandle to the southern coalfields, Black owned and operated cemeteries emerged to provide dignified burials for their deceased loved ones. In Huntington, home to West Virginia’s second-largest Black community by the 1920s, such a burial ground was provided by the McClain family.
The McClain Family’s Role in Creating a Dignified Burial Ground
Husband and wife duo Charles and Mary McClain established the McClain Funeral Home in 1911. It was one of the earliest Black mortuaries created in West Virginia. The service was important, as many white-owned mortuaries did not accept Black clients.
One of the places where the McClain Funeral Home conducted burials was an informal cemetery on a ten-acre parcel in Huntington’s Stamford Park neighborhood. In 1935, the McClains expanded their business by acquiring the cemetery and operating it as their own private burial ground. First known as Kingston Park and then Bethany Memorial Park, the McClains permanently renamed the site Bethel Memorial Park.
Unlike in other communities, Bethel was not the only burial option for Black people in Huntington. Many chose to go with the city’s public Spring Hill Cemetery, which accepted Black burials. One reason why some may have preferred Bethel was simple economics.
Death records indicate that a large number of those interred at Bethel held menial jobs, including those of custodians, waitresses, laundresses, bellmen, porters, cooks, painters, and housekeepers. The McClain family may have offered more affordable rates for plots than at Spring Hill. The fact that many graves lack permanent markers indicates the low-income status of many families buried there.
Some people also may have preferred the Black-owned and operated Bethel Memorial Park because it provided a more dignified and empowering final resting place. According to Bethel’s National Register nomination form, the cemetery “strengthened community bonds by providing a common burial space for people with shared cultural and socioeconomic experiences in segregated Huntington.”
A Cemetery of Veterans, Laborers, and Community Leaders
Also buried at the cemetery are many ministers, coal miners, railroad workers, and military veterans. Servicemen at Bethel include people such as William Bell and Sanford Johnson, who served in the famous “Black Devils” 370th Infantry Regiment during World War I; and William Booker and James Gardner, who were part of the “Immunes,” all-Black regiments created during the Spanish-American War based on the (false) belief that Black people were immune to malaria.
The McClain family conducted burials at Bethel for decades. Cemetery records have been lost, but it is estimated that over 800 people were interred at the site. After Charles and Mary both passed away, legal disputes arose between their children over ownership of the cemetery. By the mid-1970s, with its ownership status in legal limbo, the cemetery was abandoned. The last known burial occurred in 1982.
Why Bethel Memorial Park Declined After the 1970s
In 2006, after decades of litigation, the cemetery property was sold in a court-ordered public auction. By this time, Bethel Memorial Park had been swallowed up in trees and overgrowth. Many stones had fallen over or were buried. The site was virtually unrecognizable.
For the past decade, many grassroots efforts have been made to clean up, preserve, and commemorate Bethel Cemetery. A local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution documented headstones and published a book of people known to be buried at Bethel.
Several groups, including Marshall University, inmates overseen by the Cabell County Sheriff’s Department, and a nonprofit organization that provides work to recovering drug addicts, have all removed trees, bushes, and overgrowth from the site.
Marshall University also conducted a ground-penetrating radar study of the site to identify the locations of unmarked graves. In 2024, a new organization called the Bethel Cemetery Preservation Society was established and acquired ownership of the property.
Volunteers Lead a Revival at Huntington’s Forgotten Cemetery
For the past few years, Josh Keck has organized annual visits to Bethel. In addition to landscaping, his volunteers have conducted more specialized work, cleaning, resetting, and repairing tombstones.
They also hope to obtain new military headstones for any veterans who currently have unmarked graves. Thanks to their efforts and those of many others, Bethel Memorial Park has been restored to its former glory as a proper cemetery.
West Virginia’s Movement to Restore Black Burial Grounds
Bethel joins a new, growing movement across West Virginia to recognize and restore historically Black burial grounds. Nonprofit organizations have emerged to manage and clean up sites such as the Green Hill African American Cemetery in Martinsburg and the Pierce Cemetery in Fayetteville.
In Beckley, a grant-funded project successfully nominated the Wright-Hunter Cemetery to the National Register in 2024. In Mercer County, volunteers have tried to clear overgrowth at Lincoln Cemetery.
By rehabilitating these forgotten burial grounds, West Virginia communities are gradually reclaiming an important part of their cultural heritage.
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