You can help fund a memorial for the only Black person lynched in Fort Worth
.JPEG "Construction of the Mr. Fred Rouse Memorial at 1000 NE 12th Street.")
A fundraising campaign is being held to help pay for the development of a memorial to honor the only documented lynching of a Black person in Fort Worth.
The Mr. Fred Rouse Memorial is named after the man who was lynched on Dec. 11, 1921, at the corner of Northeast 12th Street and Samuels Avenue by a white mob. The memorial is on the same site at 1000 NE 12th St. in the Riverside Gardens neighborhood.
Construction on the project in underway and expected to be completed in about eight weeks.
The effort is led by the Tarrant County Coalition for Peace and Justice, which has a goal to raise $700,000 by June 15. The money will go toward completion of the memorial and operating and maintenance expenses.
Fred Rouse III, the grandson of Rouse and president of the Tarrant County Coalition for Peace and Justice, says the memorial will transform what was the site of a tragic incident to a place of peace and tranquility.
“It was a place over 100 years ago for hatred and division, and now is a place for community and bringing everybody together,” Rouse III said.
According to designs submitted to Fort Worth’s Development Services in 2023, the one-third-acre site will have a walking path and three 8-by-10-foot panels in the shape of the “death tree,” which is how the Fort Worth Star-Telegram described the hackberry tree Rouse was hanged from at the time of the lynching. The panels will display the words “justice,” “perseverance,” and “reckoning.”
A concrete memorial wall with the image of Fred Rouse II will be at the end of the path. No pictures of Fred Rouse could be found, which will be explained on the wall. The memorial will include a space for people to pray and a timeline wall detailing the day Rouse was lynched. The back of the wall will include information about the memorial’s creation by the Tarrant County Coalition for Peace and Justice.
There will be entry and pathway pavers for personalized donor tributes. The area will have a garden path with a variety of hackberry and sycamore trees, black-eyed Susans, and autumn joy plants.
The estimated cost of the memorial has risen from $1.5 to $2.1 million since last year, according Rouse III, due to delays from weather, which has increased construction costs.
In August, the city unanimously voted to allocate $232,377 in Community Partnership funds to help fund the project.
The memorial is scheduled to be completed by the end of July, with plans for a grand opening in August.
To donate go to tccpj.org and click donate or go to donorbox.org/donation-to-peace-and-justice.
