OUR MISSION
OUR MISSION
Transforming the former Ku Klux Klan auditorium in Fort Worth, TX
into The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing.
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To transform this monument to hate into a beacon of truth-telling, reconciliation, and liberation for the nation.
The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing – a reparative justice project – will honor the life and memory of Mr. Fred Rouse, a Black butcher who was lynched by a white mob in Fort Worth in 1921, by returning resources to the communities that were targeted for marginalization and violence by the Ku Klux Klan.
TRANSFORM THE BUILDING
TRANSFORM THE CITY
When the Ku Klux Klan Auditorium opened in 1924, then located at 1006 N. Main Street, Fort Worth had one of the largest KKK memberships in the United States and the building was the KKK’s
headquarters in Texas. The brick behemoth was designed and located to intimidate Northside Black, Hispanic, and immigrant residents returning home from the city center.
Transform 1012 N. Main Street is a non-profit coalition of local arts, grassroots, and service organizations as well as pro bono partners and individuals working to transform 1012 N. Main Street into The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing. The Transform 1012 Board models a pluricultural and shared leadership approach to acquiring, programming, and managing The Fred Rouse Center. This coalition ensures that the building will be led and programmed by representatives of the cultural groups that were targeted for violence and economic marginalization by the KKK, thereby returning resources to these communities.
The Transform 1012 leadership continues to speak and listen about the project among its constituency members, the larger Fort Worth community, nationally, and internationally. Given the rapid growth of Fort Worth—it is now the 13th largest city in the US, larger than San Francisco—as a leadership team we are “reassembling” the city by returning power to these groups and making 1012 N. Main Street a site of memory, a place for the whole city to come together to grapple with this history and build a way forward together.
In addition, we are making public our process of building a leadership culture that is intentional and co-created, not defaulting to one culture or colonial norms, in the hopes that it will inspire other such projects locally and nationwide.
“As a Fort Worth native, an African-American man, and as
an elected representative for many of the African-American residents of Fort Worth, I believe that it is vital that we preserve these types of spaces so that future generations
understand our history. The strong light of truth can help prevent the repetition of the dark episode in our history.”
- Congressman Marc Veasey (TX-33)
EXPLORE OUR VISION
Download the Transform 1012 N. Main Street project brochure to get a deeper understanding of our mission, the building, and the project.
Our sincerest thanks to MASS Design Group for awarding Transform 1012 N. Main Street a Catalyst Grant for the creation of these project brochures, from which all diagrams and conceptual designs featured on this site were sourced.
