$1.5M memorial for only Black man lynched in Tarrant County nears full funding
The Mr. Fred Rouse Memorial — recognizing the only documented Black person to be lynched in Fort Worth — is poised to receive the final funding needed to allow construction to begin.
The city manager’s office has recommended that the city allocate $232,377 in Community Partnership funds to support the final funding needs for the project.
Councilwoman Elizabeth Beck, whose district includes the site of the memorial, thanked city management for the funds during a work session Tuesday.
“It was one of the first things I did on council, so it’s exciting to see it kind of come to fruition, and thank you for having that fund that allows us to do unique projects like this,” Beck said.
A resolution to approve the allocation will be on the city council agenda Aug. 26.
Fred Rouse III is the grandson of Fred Rouse and president of the Tarrant County Coalition for Peace and Justice, which has worked to create a historical marker and memorial site recognizing his grandfather. He said it feels like a weight has been lifted off of his shoulders.
“I think it’s a sense of relief, because we’ve been working on this for like five years, and I’m also feeling more of gratitude and being grateful to all the people who have helped to make this happen, and just a sense of overall pride in knowing that I’m honoring my grandfather in this way,” Rouse III told the Star-Telegram before Tuesday’s meeting.
On Dec. 11, 1921, Fred Rouse was lynched at the corner of NE 12th Street and Samuels Avenue by a white mob. The Mr. Fred Rouse Memorial will be constructed at 1000 NE 12th Street, in the Riverside Gardens neighborhood, and will have public access.
The Tarrant County Coalition for Peace and Justice will merge with Transform 1012 after the completion of the site, and Transform 1012 will own and operate the memorial after completion. Transform 1012 was founded in 2019 with a mission to transform 1012 N. Main St., formerly the Ku Klux Klan Klavern No. 101 Auditorium, into The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing.
According to Rouse III, construction on the memorial is scheduled to start in a few weeks and be completed by early December. He hopes to have a ceremony in December to mark the 104th anniversary of his grandfather’s murder. The project will cost about $1.5 million and will be built by R.D. Howard Construction, a Black owned construction company.
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 explaining the day Rouse was lynched. The back of the wall will have information about the creation of the memorial by the Tarrant County Coalition for Peace and Justice. The area will have a garden path with a variety of hackberry and sycamore trees, black-eyed Susans, and autumn joy plants.
The area will have benches and two rain gardens designed to collect all of the site’s stormwater run-off. Pavers will recognize donors to the project.
This story was originally published August 19, 2025 at 5:34 PM.
