Southend Cemetery
Huntsville, Walker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A predominantly African American neighborhood called the Flat once numbered dozens of homes in an area southeast of the original boundaries of Sam Houston State University. As the university expanded in the late 1960s and early 1970s, residents were forced to sell their property and relocate. Southend Cemetery remains the last historic link to the Flat neighborhood. In 1920, community leaders will Ezell, Colonel Williams, Byrd Stubblefield and Richard Dillard purchased five acres from Gibbs Brothers & Company to establish an African American cemetery. The four men were also listed as the original trustees for what was then called Pine Grove Cemetery Association. No record or explanation has been found for the name change to Southend Cemetery. The surrounding area was once deeply wooded and could only be accessed by way of a narrow dirt road. The cemetery has been surveyed to contain at least 200 graves, including dozens of veterans, businessmen, civic leaders, and many other prominent Huntsville individuals and families. The earliest known burial is for Sarah Skelton (d. 1920), and the oldest marked grave is for Eldredge Cox (1843-1924). Noted burials include Sgt. Luby L. Smither, founding member of the first black American Legion Post in Huntsville; and Mance Williams, owner of the city’s first African American-owned auto repair shop. As the city of Huntsville grew, the dirt access road to Southend Cemetery became an extension of Montgomery Road, and its construction from Highway 75 to Bowers Road made the site highly visible. In 1998, a group of descendants and others reorganized the Southend Cemetery Association to care for this special place. It remains a testament to residents of the Flat and generations of African American heritage in Huntsville. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2017
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Southeast of Sam Houston State University once stood the Flat, a thriving African American neighborhood cleared when the university expanded in the late 1960s and 1970s. In 1920, four community leaders bought five acres to establish this cemetery, first called Pine Grove, which holds some 200 graves of veterans, businessmen, and civic leaders. When the neighborhood vanished, the burial ground endured as the last tangible link to it, cared for by descendants who reorganized its association in 1998.
Why it matters
It preserves the memory of a Black community erased by mid-century development and honors generations of African American heritage in Huntsville.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Southend Cemetery sits at the edge of Huntsville, in the East Texas Piney Woods, and its story begins in 1920, when a predominantly African American neighborhood known as the Flat filled the area southeast of the local college. In that era the community lived under segregation, and Black Huntsville built its own institutions, its homes, businesses, churches, and burial grounds, because the wider society gave it little choice but self-reliance.
The surrounding land was then deeply wooded, reachable only by a narrow dirt road, which tells you how these communities often occupied the ground at the margins of a growing town. Yet within those margins the Flat was a real neighborhood of dozens of homes, home to veterans, businessmen, and civic leaders, a full community rather than an afterthought.
The institution that would become Sam Houston State was, in 1920, a teachers college, not yet the university it grew into decades later. Its later expansion, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, would reshape everything around it, but at the cemetery's founding the campus was a smaller neighbor to a settled Black community.
People & events
The cemetery was an act of foresight by community leaders. In 1920, four men, Will Ezell, Colonel Williams, Byrd Stubblefield, and Richard Dillard, purchased five acres from Gibbs Brothers and Company to establish an African American burial ground, and served as the original trustees of what was first called the Pine Grove Cemetery Association. Why the name later changed to Southend has never been explained by any surviving record.
The ground filled with the life of the neighborhood. Surveys have found at least two hundred graves, including dozens of veterans as well as businessmen, civic leaders, and prominent Huntsville families. The earliest known burial is that of Sarah Skelton, who died in 1920, the very year the cemetery was founded, and the oldest marked grave belongs to Eldredge Cox, born in 1843 and buried in 1924.
Among those remembered here are Sergeant Luby L. Smither, a founding member of the first Black American Legion post in Huntsville, and Mance Williams, who owned the city's first African American automobile repair shop. Then came the hardest chapter: as the college expanded in the late 1960s and early 1970s, residents of the Flat were compelled to sell their property and relocate, and the neighborhood was erased. In 1998 a group of descendants and others reorganized the Southend Cemetery Association to care for the place that remained.
Its place in the American story
The clearing of the Flat is a local instance of a story repeated across the United States in the mid-twentieth century. Again and again, the expansion of campuses, highways, and civic projects fell heaviest on African American neighborhoods, uprooting communities that had few resources to resist and leaving little behind. What happened at the edge of this campus happened in cities and towns nationwide.
What makes Southend important is that something did survive. When the homes were gone, the cemetery endured as the last historic link to the Flat, the one piece of ground that could not simply be rebuilt over without confronting the dead. Burial grounds have often been the most durable record of Black communities precisely because they carry a moral weight that houses and shops did not.
The men and women buried here also embody the fuller American story that segregation tried to obscure, a founder of a veterans post, a pioneering Black business owner, civic leaders and ordinary families. Its recognition as a Historic Texas Cemetery is part of a wider, overdue national effort to mark and protect these places before the memory of the communities that made them is lost.
If you visit
Come to Southend Cemetery as you would to any resting place, quietly and with respect for the families who still tend it and the descendants who reorganized its care. This is a working burial ground and a memorial, not an attraction, and the right posture is reverence.
Once the site was hidden in thick woods at the end of a dirt track; today that old access road has become an extension of Montgomery Road, and the construction of that route made the cemetery highly visible where it was once nearly secret. As you look over the grounds, remember that the neighborhood that surrounded it is gone, and that these markers are among the last physical traces of the people who lived there.
Look for the oldest stones, and for the graves of veterans, and let the names stand in for the vanished streets of the Flat. In a wider tour of Huntsville and the East Texas Piney Woods, this quiet field offers something many historic stops cannot: a direct, sobering encounter with a community that was displaced, and with the descendants who refuse to let it be forgotten.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Will Ezell
- · Colonel Williams
- · Byrd Stubblefield
- · Richard Dillard
- · Sgt. Luby L. Smither
- · Mance Williams
- · Eldredge Cox
Themes & tags
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