An Eye on the Past

A racial terror lynching that occurred 100 years ago is forcing a city to reckon with its past while providing hope for its future.

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At the southeast corner of Samuels Avenue and NE 12th Street, only one mile from the Stockyards, rests a small patch of land that butts up to the painted red wall of a local window-cleaning company. Treeless, the grass is mowed regularly but has the typical overgrowth of your everyday, innocuous vacant lot. Before Tarrant County Coalition for Peace and Justice acquired the land, it served as a spot for its previous owners to set aside shipping containers and park unused utility vehicles. It wasn’t anything unsightly, but nothing that would grab your attention, either. At least, if you didn’t know its history as being the spot where, 100 years ago, Fred Rouse was shot eight times and lynched on a hackberry tree. Today, the lot is empty.

Fred Rouse III, Rouse’s grandson, examines the plot of land — which will soon become The Mr. Fred Rouse Memorial — with an undeniably pensive look; he stands close to where the hackberry tree may have once stood. Rouse III carries a sturdy disposition and is clearly steadfast in his beliefs — and, according to accounts, isn’t built too dissimilarly from his grandfather — strong and stout. It was less than two years ago that Rouse III learned of his grandfather’s horrific fate, and the story continues to jar and confuse him. Despite never meeting his grandfather and never hearing the typical tall tales of his forebears, the racial terror lynching of his grandfather felt fresh and personal because he now understood how it has affected him, how it affected his father, and how it affected his entire family. Speaking with him, it’s clear he continues to ruminate on the racial terror lynching. It’s as if he became close to and started to know a grandfather whom he had never met and understood he never will meet.

“I felt disbelief that somebody could treat another human like that,” Rouse III says. “He was shot eight times. He was stabbed. He was beat. He was hung from a tree. He had small kids at home. My dad was five or six months old when this happened, so he grew up never knowing his dad.”

Rouse III, 46 at the time, was watching the Miami Heat play the Los Angeles Lakers during the 2020 NBA Finals when he got a call from an old college friend who said he spoke with some people who’d been trying to reach him concerning his genealogy. After relaying his number through his friend, he quickly received a call. This is how he found out about his grandfather.

Only because of the three that suffixed his name was he even aware that his grandfather existed. And, within the span of a brief phone call, was told that his grandfather was lynched by a white mob in 1921.

When Fred Rouse III was young, before memories typically kick in, his parents were divorced. He moved to East Texas, in Corrigan, and was raised by his great-grandmother. His biological father, Fred Rouse Jr., whom Rouse III saw only intermittently and lived in Houston, died when Rouse III was only 12.

Rouse III says that his father grew up angry. He grew up hating white people. On Oct. 9, 2002, Tim Madigan for the Star-Telegram wrote a feature story on the racial terror lynching, which included an interview with Rouse Jr.’s first cousin, Robert Rouse.

“Bitterness poured from Fred Rouse Jr. then, venom that never seemed to abate, to the point that relatives eventually tried to persuade him to forgive, if not forget,” Madigan wrote. “But the son of Fort Worth’s last lynching victim would not hear of it. He hated White people for what they did to his father, hated them until the day in the spring of 1986 when Fred Rouse Jr. died.”

When his father married his mom, Rouse Jr. was 20 years her senior and, according to Rouse III, his father was so pained by his father’s murder that he never told his wife.

“He just couldn’t talk about it,” Rouse III says. “It just took control of his life. I think that that's what happens in a lot of African-American communities when you have people, fathers, sons, mothers, daughters killed and raped and hung and stabbed in such a brutal way, it causes a generation of a race of people to hate a generation of another race of people.”

Rouse III went through high school, college — he graduated from Texas Tech — then came to Dallas and soon started a job at Texas Instruments. Today, Rouse III is an Executive Board member of Tarrant County Coalition for Peace and Justice and has become an active and engaging voice in the fight for equality and justice.

“Righting the wrongs of the past is definitely one of the reasons why I'm at the forefront,” Rouse III says. “Someone isn’t going to kill our relatives, kill our people, or humans, in general, and just push it under the rug. Because then they win.

“But when you have to face the wrongs that were done, that's when change happens because hearing it and seeing it stings. And when it stings, you have to move because you don't want it to sting anymore. I think that's the fastest way you get to racial equality.”

Just a month prior to receiving the phone call informing him of his grandfather, Rouse had lost his mother to COVID-19. As he put it, it was an emotional roller coaster. But learning more about his family, even the gruesome details, also brought them closer together.

“In October [2020], I got a chance to meet some relatives here in Fort Worth that I never knew ever existed,” Rouse III says. “So out of the tragic news about my grandfather, there was some good news that came out of it.

“I'm thankful for everything that’s occurred in the past several months,” Rouse III says. “Because it not only enabled me to learn my family's history, but it also brought me together with relatives that I never knew. It brought families together.”

Like so many, Rouse moved his family to the area from East Texas in search of a better life. Wages in the area were thin, and the Swift & Company meatpacking plant offered non-union wages. And it was this paycheck that spurred his willingness to come to work on Dec. 6, 1921. That morning, Rouse crossed a picket line made up of White union workers to enter the doors of Swift & Company meatpacking plant. Rouse, like many husbands and fathers, was steadfast in his priority — providing for his family — and could hardly afford missing a day’s worth of wages. But he was also aware of the danger — a Black man daring to defy White picketers — and went to work that day with protection in the form of a firearm in his overcoat. When Rouse left work that afternoon to be with his family, a confrontation between he and the picketers broke out and, in an act of self-defense, Rouse shot Tom and Tracy Maclin. Both would make a full recovery.

“Those White picketers were already angry at the company because they wanted higher wages,” Rouse III says. “Then, to throw salt on the wound, the company hires Black men to come in and do their jobs. So, I can almost hear and see the taunting and name calling that my grandfather endured every time he went through those picket lines going to and leaving from work. He was probably spit on and hit and kicked every day as he crossed those picket lines.”

In the days following the racial terror lynching, local newspapers identified Rouse as “Fred Rouse, Negro” and ignored any other details about his life — the fact that he was a husband and a father to three children or the fact that he worked tirelessly at the Swift & Company meatpacking plant in what was then Niles City to provide for his family.

He was a strikebreaker. He stood in his power. He was walking to and from work in support of what he felt was right.

“Because Mr. Fred Rouse resisted as a Black person, he was murdered,” McKinney says. “Because Mr. Fred Rouse spoke up, he was murdered. Because Mr. Fred Rouse fought back, he was murdered.”

Rouse was beaten, stomped, stabbed, and left for dead. He received two skull fractures that day and was transported to City & County Hospital on East Fourth and Jones Streets. Five days later, on Dec. 11, a mob of 20 men wielding weapons received little resistance from hospital staff when abducting Rouse from the hospital.

Rouse received another blow to the head and the pack of men pushed him into one of several sedans that would caravan down Jones Street to a hackberry tree on Samuels Avenue. A short time later, Rouse, barefoot and in his hospital gown, was hanging from one of its limbs with members of the mob continuing to fire bullets into his body.

According to a story published in The Fort Worth Press, the day after the lynching, law enforcement was as much to blame as the mob itself. In February of the following year, three men were charged in the murder of Fred Rouse, including two Niles City police officers. None were indicted.

Four days after Rouse’s lifeless body hanged from one of its limbs, the property’s owner, A.S. Dingee, ordered the tree be chopped down. One year prior, Tom Vickery, who had killed a Fort Worth Police Department officer, was hanged on the same hackberry tree, which became known as “Hangman’s Tree” and the “Death Tree.” While reports vary on why Dingee removed the tree, it’s often said she did so “to encourage goodwill toward men come Christmas.”

Speak to any Fort Worthian about the racial terror lynching of Fred Rouse, and it’s clear the narrative has remained one of the city’s most unnerving and powerful stories. And it’s a story that’s yet to be finished. The continued effect on all communities to demand positive change and the conversations it’s started have given Fred Rouse a new life.

“You have so many people in the communities now, and not just Black people, not just African Americans fighting for equality,” Rouse III says. “You have white people, Hispanic, everybody is fighting for equality. It's a good thing because we're all coming together now and saying, ‘Hey, you know what? This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong.’"

As Rouse III and McKinney told us, acts of racism have a generational effect.

“It's important to know what happened to understand why we're seeing the results of many generations of trauma be enacted in our communities, in our neighborhoods, in our families, on our bodies,” McKinney says.

But, if we acknowledge and learn from history, humanity should improve with every generation.

“I think the more we tell the truth and accept the truth, the more easily we can walk the path that is now illuminated for us,” McKinney says.

With at least an eye maintaining focus on injustices and inequalities that still exist, it’s important to examine the good being done and steps being taken to rectify the city’s past. Fort Worth is full of earnest, passionate people who are beginning conversations that, decades ago, were never being had.

“I think we’re all trying to be more intentional about finding our way through conversations about race and the realities of systemic racism and the experiences of people of color in our community,” Sara Geer of the Rainwater Charitable Foundation says. “And I think we’re looking for opportunities for philanthropy to work on behalf of those who have been disenfranchised over time.”

Numerous organizations, including the Rainwater Charitable Foundation, Tarrant County Coalition for Peace and Justice, and DNAWORKS, are engaging the community in conversations about race. And Fort Worth is listening.

“I think the apathy or complacency is an old narrative that does not pertain to us now.,” McKinney says.

Fort Worth Lynching Tour: Honoring the Memory of Mr. Fred Rouse, an interactive tour via bicycle or car hosted by DNAWORKS that takes guests through the events of Dec. 11, 1921, has been a big success with dates continuing in 2022. That same group is teaming with seven other local community organizations to acquire 1012 North Main St. — colloquially known as the old KKK building — and transform it into The Fred Rouse Center and Museum for Arts and Community Healing.

Tarrant County Coalition for Peace and Justice (TCCPJ), for whom Rouse III is an Executive Board member, recently purchased the vacant lot on Samuels Avenue and NE 12th Street where Rouse was lynched and will be creating The Mr. Fred Rouse Memorial. While it might be easiest to simply install a historical marker, the group also plans on making the area more than a brief educational point for passersby. Plans include a botanical garden, spaces to walk, meet, and reflect, and the installation of an Equal Justice Initiative Historical Marker. TCCPJ is working with the landscape design duo Diane Jones and Austin Allen of DesignJones, LLC to see the project come to fruition. Fort Worthians can expect an engaging experience that will honor the memory of Fred Rouse.

To commemorate the 100th year after of the racial terror lynching of Rouse, TCCPJ will coordinate a Peace Vigil for Reconciliation in the Stockyards on Monday, Dec. 6 at 5 p.m. and a Memorial March for Justice on Friday, Dec. 10, at 4 p.m. in downtown Fort Worth. The following day, the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce Texas Heritage Trails will unveil a historical marker in collaboration with TCCPJ and Performing Arts Fort Worth, Inc. at the Maddox-Muse Center, which was once City & County Hospital from where a white mob abducted Rouse. Then, at 1 p.m. a groundbreaking ceremony will take place for The Mr. Fred Rouse Memorial at 1000 NE 12th St., where the hackberry tree once stood.

“We have an opportunity to change the now and the future,” McKinney says. “And I'm hopeful.”