Community conversations begin in transforming old KKK building into a center for healing

Transform 1012 N. Main Street hosted the first Northside community conversation at Artes de la Rosa, 1440 N. Main St., for the creation of The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing.

The event will introduce the project and nonprofit to the Northside community. It will allow collaboration and education about the challenges and trauma of Black and Brown Northside residents, with the goal of finding solutions through healing, as the center is designed for the community, said Carlos Gonzalez-Jaime, executive director of Transform 1012 N. Main Street.

“It’s important to understand that there’s a lot of discrimination and injustices in not only Fort Worth, but in the world,” Gonzalez-Jaime told the Star-Telegram. “The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing aims to help us learn from the past and to prevent this horrible thing from happening again, and most importantly, to give us hope and to help us to heal a community.”

Transform 1012 N. Main Street is a nonprofit coalition of organizations, such as DNAWORKS and SOL Ballet Folklorico, founded in 2019 with a mission to transform 1012 N. Main Street, formerly the Ku Klux Klan Klavern No. 101 Auditorium, into The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing.

The building is named after Fred Rouse, the only documented Black man to be lynched in Fort Worth in 1921.

The center will be a cultural hub of different organizations occupying the space and other developing ideas such as a performance space, workshops on leadership for underrepresented communities, and a tool lending library for community projects.

The design architects for The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing will be led by the collaboration of two architecture firms: B-arn-S Architects and ch_studio.

The timeline for the construction and opening of the center was extended as construction is now set to take place in 2026 and the grand opening in 2027.

Germane Barnes, a principal architect for B-arn-S Architects, said the reason is to gain on-the-ground information and have conversations with residents who will use the space. Then they can use what they have gathered to use during the design phase to make the best possible center based on community needs.

Barnes added that these information sessions are open to native and non-native English speakers as interpreters will be available. Even though it’s named after Fred Rouse, the center is for everyone in Fort Worth.

“We want to make sure that a building that represents so many communities is able to have a voice in the creation of that building and the listening sessions that we’re having are ones that we try to do on their schedules,” Barnes said. “Because we recognize so many people have full-time jobs or responsibilities, and so we can’t demand much more of their presence.”

The plan is to have more community conversations throughout Fort Worth and partnerships with organizations who want to take part in the mission.

During a presentation Saturday, Fred Rouse III, the grandson of Fred Rouse, spoke in the Artes de la Rosa auditorium. He said everyone who is taking part in this center is making history.

He is president of the Tarrant County Coalition for Peace and Justice, which has worked to create a historical marker and a memorial site recognizing his grandfather at the site of his lynching on Northeast 12th Street and Samuels Avenue.

After purchasing the land for the memorial, Ross III said, he had to cut the grass. Holding back tears and stopping for a few moments in front of the audience, he shared how while he cut the grass he would talk to his grandfather as he said, “I hope that we are honoring you in a way that you would be pleased.”

“Here we are honoring him at the very place of the people that murdered him, thought that they killed the man, thought that they killed the name,” Rouse III said. “But here we are 100 years later and here I stand, 103 years later I share the same name. I have the same blood and three hours from here not only is Fred Ross III standing here, but there’s also a Fred Ross IV and he’s my son. And just two weeks ago we just found out that there’s going to be a Fred Rouse V.”