“Everybody has a story.” The Soul of Fort Worth tour highlights Black history
New walking tours, with a mission to tell the stories of Fort Worth’s historic Black communities, begin this month.
The Soul of Fort Worth: Black History Tours will provide two walking tours, one exploring the Historic Southside and another around Sundance Square. The tours will feature the pioneers, buildings, and legacies that have shaped the city’s soul, according to Mason Thompson, founder and CEO of Soul of Fort Worth.
There will be a limited run of three tours on Jan. 17, 24, and 30. Tickets cost $25 per person, and tours last about an hour and a half. To sign up go to souloffortworth.com.
Thompson created the tours to tell the stories of Black people who built Fort Worth, as reflected in the churches, organizations, and neighborhoods we know today.
“When people think about Fort Worth, they don’t really think much about Black people, and they don’t think it’s a history or a story here for African Americans,” Thompson said. “But we were here just as early as any other person when Fort Worth started in the 1840s.”
Thompson was raised in Fort Worth, and his grandparents lived in the Historic Southside and Stop Six neighborhoods. He attended Trimble Technical High School and graduated from Huston-Tillotson University in Austin in December with a bachelor’s degree in history and a minor in African and African American studies.
There, he learned about and became a tour guide for Black Austin Tours, a company led by Javier Wallace that offers walking tours to educate guests on Austin’s Black history and culture. This was his inspiration to create Soul of Fort Worth tours focusing on Fort Worth’s Black history and people.
Thompson conducted his own research using Newspapers.com, the Fort Worth History Center, and The Portal to Texas History, an online repository of Texas historical materials, on the various areas of Fort Worth with Black historical significance. He is also a member of Tarrant County Black Historical & Genealogical Society.
Thompson says Fort Worth tries its best to tell the story of Black people in the city. This includes a mural at Fort Worth Central Station honoring African American railroad businesses and neighborhoods, as well as the annual Juneteenth celebrations.
He wants to take it a step further. He wants people to learn not only through social media posts or reading, but through a visual experience where attendees can see where the history occurred.
During the Historic Southside tour, he plans to highlight several significant markers in the Terrell Heights area. This includes the Hazel Harvey Peace Center for Neighborhoods, named after the late educator, and the tour will touch on other notable figures, such as William “Gooseneck Bill” McDonald, a local businessman.
On the Sundance Square tour, he plans to take participants to Mt. Gilead Baptist Church, Fort Worth’s oldest African American Baptist church, and the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, Lodge No. 2144, home to a Black fraternal organization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In the future, he plans to include a tour of Lake Como and the Stop Six neighborhood.
The tours are meant to help people learn from history, take ownership of what occurred in the past, and appreciate what we have today, Thompson said.
“I believe everybody has a story, especially our people here in Fort Worth,” Thompson said.
