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No one alive remembers details of Fred Rouse’s life, but today we can imagine. Likely born to parents who had been enslaved in Mississippi, Rouse moved to Fort Worth in the 1910s. As gruesome as his butchering job at the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant probably was, the paycheck was an opportunity to provide for his family — a wife and three children, including a newborn son bearing his name.
Rouse couldn’t join Swift’s white employees when they went on strike in 1921. Black laborers were not permitted to be members of unions but, like Rouse, they were often called on to fill in for the jobs vacated by strikers. His decision to work led to his abduction and lynching.
Mr. Fred Rouse was a Black, non-union butcher for Swift & Company in the Niles City Stockyards (now Fort Worth). For the most part, Black people were not allowed to be members of trade unions in the Jim Crow South. Mr. Rouse was a strikebreaker and, in so being, crossed both union and racial lines.
There they hanged Mr. Fred Rouse and riddled his body with bullets. Over one hundred people drove to the site to watch the result of the murder of Mr. Fred Rouse.
As part of the City of Fort Worth’s Juneteenth Celebration, a segment was presented by the TCCPJ on Mr. Fred Rouse, whose death resulted from the only documented lynching of an African American in Fort Worth. Although it is a dark stain in Fort Worth’s history, TCCPJ believes it is a history lesson that can be used to help eliminate racial injustice.
This Corresponds to the Route Taken During the Fort Worth Lynching Tour
Mr. Fred Rouse was one of thousands of Black people lynched in the United States. The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) researchers documented 4075 racial terror lynchings of African Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia between 1877 and 1950—at least 800 more lynchings of Black people in these states than previously reported in the most comprehensive work done on lynching to date.
Per EJI, this was not “frontier justice” carried out by a few marginalized vigilantes or extremists. Instead, many African Americans who were never accused of any crime were tortured and murdered in front of picnicking spectators (including elected officials and prominent citizens) for bumping into a white person, or wearing their military uniforms after World War I, or not using the appropriate title when addressing a white person. People who participated in lynchings were celebrated and acted with impunity.
Stay updated! Don’t miss TCCPJ news and events. We welcome you to our group of dedicated advocates for community healing.
