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100 years after Fred Rouse was lynched in Fort Worth, these events promote healing

One hundred roses were carried through the stockyards Monday to mark 100 years after the racial violence that killed Fred Rouse.

“This is the first time in history when Mr. Fred Rouse is remembered here in the Stockyards that is imbued with our identities as Fort Worthians, and today as Fort Worthians we imbue the memory of Mr. Fred Rouse so that he will never be forgotten,” said Adam W. McKinney, president and co-founder of the nonprofit Tarrant County Coalition for Peace and Justice, which organized the event.

Monday’s vigil is one of several events planned by the group early this month to honor the life and legacy of Rouse, who was a victim of the only recorded lynching of a Black man in Fort Worth.

The nearly 20 participants in Monday evening’s vigil walked through the sites were Rouse was terrorized on Dec. 6, 1921. The walk started where Rouse worked as a butcher for Swift & Company at NE 23rd Street. The route continued toward where McKinney said Rouse would have walked expecting to go home to his family after a day of work. But along the way, at the bottom of the steps at East Exchange Avenue, it’s believed that he was attacked and stabbed repeatedly by a white mob. He was taken to a hospital, and four days later he was kidnapped and hanged at a tree on NE 12th Street and Samuels Avenue.

McKinney said the intent of the events is to recognize the reality of how Rouse died and to heal from it.

The Coalition for Peace and Justice hopes that from these events “people continue to dedicate their time and their thinking toward what it might mean for communities to heal. I think that also means envisioning the pathway forward, and I think it is difficult for us to move forward if we don’t know” what happened, McKinney said.

The Coalition for Peace and Justice also welcomes people on Friday, Dec. 10, at 4 p.m. for a memorial march for justice from the Tarrant County Courthouse to where Rouse was killed. On Saturday, the coalition will host the unveiling of a Fort Worth Heritage Trails historical marker at 11:30 a.m. at the former city and county hospital at at 330 E. 4th St., and at 1 p.m. there will be a groundbreaking ceremony at 100 NE 12th St., the site where Rouse was killed.

The coalition plans to transform the space on 12th Street into a site of racial healing. McKinney said the group hopes to incorporate community perspectives on what the space might look like.

A group walks during a vigil to remember 100 years after the attack on Fred Rouse Dec., 6, 2021, at the Fort Worth Stockyards. Rouse was later abducted from a hospital and lynched on Dec. 11, 1921.
A group walks during a vigil to remember 100 years after the attack on Fred Rouse Dec., 6, 2021, at the Fort Worth Stockyards. Rouse was later abducted from a hospital and lynched on Dec. 11, 1921.

“Our goal is not only to remember the atrocity to ensure that racial terror violence ends against people of the global majority, but also to remember that Mr. Rouse was a man with a family and a career,” McKinney said.

Fred Rouse III, Rouse’s grandson was present at the vigil Monday.

“I can truly say this has been one of the hardest walks down the street that I have ever had to do in my life,” Rouse said.

Coalition volunteer Angela Mitchell said the vigil was difficult for her. In the cold weather, she helped McKinney carry a sign that read “Say His Name, Fort Worth: Mr. Fred Rouse.”

“I’m thinking to myself, ‘My hands are hurting, but this dude, you know, lost his life, for no reason at all,’” she said.

She said what happened to Rouse is a reminder that similar events haven’t stopped occurring 100 years later.

“All of this makes me angry because I feel like something should have been memorialized way before now,” Mitchell said.

But she added that she hopes the events memorializing the life and death of Rouse will cause people to recognize what happened and “feel it with us.”

After the event Monday, Rouse III shared his hope for what would happen next.

“When you return back to your communities I want you guys to love each other, be united with each other,” he said. “Because what happened to my grandfather is an example of what happens when we are at odds with each other, when one race thinks that they can control another race.”