City Council approves funding to help build African American Museum in Fort Worth
The City Council on Tuesday approved the reallocation of money for the Fort Worth African American Museum and Cultural Center building to preserve the history, culture and stories of African Americans in the area.
The city donated $40,000 in 2022 to fund a study of potential museum sites. During a Jan. 6 work session meeting, Kacey Thomas, the city’s director of Neighborhood Services, said the museum’s nonprofit organization notified the city on July 2025 they had purchased two units of an existing building and wanted to allocate those funds to help with building improvements.
The two buildings total 5,000 square feet and are located at 3100 and 3104 East Rosedale St., across from Texas Wesleyan University in the Polytechnic Heights neighborhood in east Fort Worth.
John Barnett, co-chair of the organization’s steering committee, told the Star-Telegram there is no set timeline for the museum’s completion, but the group is working as expeditiously as possible to deliver a high-quality, engaging museum.
Barnett said the mission is to preserve African American history and culture locally and beyond.
In 2020, the city’s Neighborhood Services Department, Fort Worth Housing Solutions and a subcommittee of the African American Steering Committee began developing criteria for an institution to preserve the history and culture of African Americans, with an emphasis on the stories of people in Fort Worth.
It arose from redevelopment discussions about Butler Place, a public housing project that closed in December 2020. In a series of community workshops, stakeholders proposed establishing an African American museum to mitigate the redevelopment’s adverse impacts on historic resources in the Black community.
In May 2022, three possible sites for the museum were presented at public forum at the Como Community Center: repurposing the Community Arts Center in the Cultural District, building a new space between the Community Arts Center and the Museum of Science and History, and building a new space at the site of the Southside Community Center in the Historic Southside neighborhood. This sparked debate in the community about whether to build the museum among the city’s other museums or within the Historic Southside’s Black community.
