About

1 square inch; photographic.
24 gelatin silver prints

Collection Description

Calvin Littlejohn, a Fort Worth, Texas-based professional photographer, born August 1, 1909, in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. Essentially orphaned at age nine, he was raised by his grandparents near Cotton Plant and did farm work through his high school years. Littlejohn attended Philander Smith College in Little Rock and left in 1933.

Littlejohn, trained in the graphic arts, became interested in photography during college and around 1933, gained his first experiences in photography through Little Rock's Kitter and Professional Photo Studio. Following job opportunities to Fort Worth, he did domestic work, painted, and photographed for the segregated Fort Worth high schools. Recognizing the need for a photographer for the African American community of Fort Worth and Tarrant County, Calvin Littlejohn opened the Littlejohn Studio in 1934.

Over his sixty-year career documenting African American life and culture, Littlejohn photographed students in the Fort Worth public schools, religious and community groups, news events, and visiting celebrities. His work was published in Sepia magazine, The Kansas City Call, The Fort Worth Eagle Eye, The Chicago Defender, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and other serial publications. Littlejohn also provided documentary and evidential photographs for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for use in legal cases. Calvin Littlejohn operated the Littlejohn Studio until the mid-1980s and died September 5, 1993.

Littlejohn was a member of Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal and Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity. An oral history with Littlejohn and examples of his work appear in Portraits of Community: African American Photography in Texas (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996).

The collection consists of selected examples of Littlejohn's black and white commercial photography, made between 1948 and about 1960. Other holdings of Littlejohn's images are found in the Special Collections of The University of Texas at Arlington. The bulk of the photographer's work remains in possession of his family.

Arrangement: prints arranged by subject, alphabetically within subject.

Copyright and permissions: use in educational research and publication only. Permission from TAAP Archive required.

Source: Calvin Littlejohn

See also: Oral History Collection