Book takes a historical look at Huntsville

By Matthew Jackson

Jeff Littlejohn might be the last person you’d expected to compile a book on Huntsville’s history.

The Dallas native spent his teenage years in Nashville, earned his bachelor’s degree in history from Belmont University in Tennessee and his master’s degree in history from the University of Arkansas.

Littlejohn even admits never having been to Huntsville before he took a job as an assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State University in 2005.

But after three years dwelling in the home of Sam Houston, he couldn’t help but get drawn in by the history.

Last year, Littlejohn partnered with the Walker County Historical Commission and began to research a book of photographs chronicling the story of Huntsville from its establishment to the mid-20th century.

The result is “Huntsville,” the latest installment in Arcadia Publishing’s “Images of America” series. The book will hit stores May 4.

Littlejohn conceived the book as a way to tie Huntsville’s history to his teaching in a more direct way.

“I teach U.S. history, and I try to relate it to local stories as much as possible, because that’s what the students seem interested in,” Littlejohn said. “It was difficult to find a book on Huntsville that was for a sale at a bookstore.”

Intrigued by the stories he had already learned about early Huntsville, Littlejohn began working with the Historical Commission, researching photographs using a variety of sources. In the end, he compiled 240 images into the 128 pages of Huntsville, following a thematic organization that separately addresses Huntsville’s founding families, schools, churches and other major elements.

“It’s a thematic book, so the first chapter I called ‘Founding Families,’ and it covered from Pleasant Gray in the 1830s to the yellow fever epidemic of 1867,” Littlejohn said. “The last chapter is called ‘National Connections,’ and it really tries to place Huntsville in a national context.”

Among the images in “Huntsville” are portraits of Sam Houston, images of the original Huntsville land grant, a drawing of Huntsville from the 1840s, and Pleasant Gray’s signature on a deed selling Huntsville’s town square to the city for a dollar.

There are also the darker elements of Huntsville’s history, including slave advertisements printed by The Huntsville Item in the 1860s, and images from the civil rights movement 100 years later.

“I think the chapter I enjoyed doing the most was the one on schools, because desegregation of schools is my research interest, so it was interesting to tell the story of schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” Littlejohn said.

With the book prepared for release, Littlejohn is now working to expand the photo project into a digital medium.

“We’re seeking a Humanities Texas grant for a piece called ‘Democracy and Diversity in Walker County,’” Littlejohn said. “It’s going to be a digital project that explores the topic in great detail with six of my colleagues in the history department. So if anything, the book was a starting point.”

After nine months of research and compilation, Littlejohn feels he has achieved something with “Huntsville,” establishing a clearer picture of Huntsville’s history, and shedding light on the city’s diversity.

“My hope was that it would present a more unified portrait of Huntsville, in the sense that many of the books that have come out in the past are either dominated by the great white heroes of the past or the great black heroes of the past,” Littlejohn said. “I tried to do something that incorporated as much as I could the variety of the people who lived in Huntsville.”

“Huntsville” will be available May 4 at online bookstores and local bookstores. Author Jeff Littlejohn will be featured at a book signing at the Huntsville Hasting’s on May 30 from 1-3 p.m.

For more information, visit www.arcadiapublishing.com.