FORT WORTH
LYNCHING TOUR
Made possible with funding from:
Asylum Arts, City of Fort Worth Diversity & Inclusion Department,
DuBose Family Foundation, Mid-America Arts Alliance, and an
Anonymous Fund at the North Texas Community Foundation
Honoring the Memory of Mr. Fred Rouse
ABOUT THE PROJECT
*Trigger warning: references to racial violence
Fort Worth Lynching Tour: Honoring the Memory of Mr. Fred Rouse
is a group bike and car tour to the sites associated with the lynching of Mr. Fred Rouse in Fort Worth, TX, on December 11, 1921. The tour is accompanied by a downloadable, augmented reality app that can be used in each of the five sites to better understand the story of Mr. Rouse’s murder
at the hands of a White mob.
The goal of the tour is to generate community healing through
memorial activism. Fort Worth Lynching Tour: Honoring the
Memory of Mr. Fred Rouse invites participants to ask the questions,
“What, how, why, and whom do we remember?”
The 2021 tour dates are Saturdays and Sundays, March 27th
thru May 1st. Each tour will begin at 1:00 pm. The tour is socially
distant and lasts approximately three hours (the bike tour
is a little longer). As part of the tour, DNAWORKS will host a
Community Storycircle for participants to process the tour experience
together and share stories of resistance, resilience, and healing.
Participants can take the tour either by bicycle (Fort Worth Bike Sharing
is donating free bicycle rentals for the tours) or in their own cars.
Reservations are pay-what-you-can.
CONTEXT AND PHILOSOPHY
In the 1920s, Fort Worth, TX had one of the largest Ku Klux Klan memberships in the United States. Klan members paraded openly through downtown Fort Worth dressed in full regalia. The murderers of Mr. Rouse, arriving in a caravan of cars, kidnapped him from City & County Hospital before killing him. And after Mr. Rouse was hanged, hundreds of people drove to the site of the lynching to witness the result of the murder.
With Fort Worth Lynching Tour: Honoring the Memory of Mr. Fred Rouse, we work to dismantle racism and undo the effects of anti-Black racial terror violence by coming together and physicalizing liberation. We do this by caravaning through the same streets that the Klan did and reversing their route, riding bicycles and driving cars openly to remember Mr. Rouse. Fort Worth Lynching Tour: Honoring the Memory of Mr. Fred Rouse is both an event to memorialize as well as to reclaim space and one another.
PRODUCTION TEAM
Concept and Choreography
Adam W. McKinney
Director
Daniel Banks
Music
Third Wind Productions (Maritri Garrett and David Winder)
Graphic Design
Troy Lambert
App Design
Digital Ant Media
Tintype Photography
Will Wilson
Associate Producer
Jiles King
Production Associate
NaTasha Thompson
Production Manager
Jamelyn Ebelacker
Production Assistant
Lauren Huynh
Sound Engineering
Michael Billow and Gregg Powers
Fort Worth Lynching Tour Community: Honoring the Memory of Fred Rouse
Community Circle of Leaders and Supporters
Tori Adams
Amphibian Stage Productions
CityEquity USA, Inc.
Ayesha Ganguly/Windows on Your World
Tammy Melody Gomez, Sound Culture
MiShon Landry, CEO, Inclusive Leadership Institute
LGBTQ SAVES
Ministers Justice Coalition of Texas
Near Southside Arts
New Mount Rose Missionary Baptist Church
Tamara Payne/Ensemble Coworking
Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
The Projects Group
Third Space DFW
Estrus Tucker, DEI Consultants, LLC
Texas Christian University Race and Reconciliation Initiative
Teresa Coleman Wash, Bishop Arts Theatre Center
Guest Artists:
Edykah Chilome, Julienne Greer, Sedrick Huckaby, Jordan Jones, Opal Lee, Pastor Kyev P. Tatum, Sr.