African American Museum Fort Worth

About Selcer’sa History Of Fort Worth In Black & White 165 Years Of African

A History of Fort Worth in Black & White fills a long-empty niche onthe Fort Worth bookshelf: a scholarly history of the citys blackcommunity that starts at the beginning with Ripley Arnold and the earlysettlers, and comes down to today with our current battles overeducation, housing, and representation in city affairs. The bookssidebars on some noted and some not-so-noted African Americans make itappealing as a school text as well as a book for the general reader.

Using a wealth of primary sources, Richard Selcer dispels severalenduring myths, for instance the mistaken belief that Camp Bowie trainedonly white soldiers, and the spurious claim that Fort Worth managed toavoid the racial violence that plagued other American cities in thetwentieth century. Selcer arrives at some surprisingly frank conclusionsthat will challenge current politically correct notions.

Selcer does a great job of exploring little-known history about themilitary, education, sports and even some social life andorganizations. Bob Ray Sanders, author of Calvin Littlejohn:Portrait of a Community in Black and White

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Fort Worths National Juneteenth Museum To Break Ground In 2023

Opal Lees dream of a building to commemorate the breaking of the chains is moving closer to fruition as she and her team have unveiled design renderings for the National Juneteenth Museum, to be located in Fort Worths Historic Southside.

The 50,000-square-foot museum, which will be built in the 900 block of East Rosedale Street, is expected to break ground in 2023 and be open to the public on June 19, 2025. It will host exhibits, discussions and events about the significance of the path to freedom for slaves in Texas and other African Americans following the end of the Civil War.

It will also further enhance the growing legacy of Lee, the Fort Worth educator, community activist and 2022 Nobel Peace Prize nominee who has long been known as the Grandmother of Juneteenth.

Seeing the national museum moving forward is a dream fulfilled, said the 95-year-old Lee, who has had her own small Juneteenth Museum in that location for almost two decades. To see it become a central place for discussion, collaboration and learning seems to be the providential next step. Its mind-boggling, but Im glad to see it all come to pass.

The project design embraces the local African American experience through motifs and symbolic touchpoints inspired by the gabled rooftops that define the Historic Southside neighborhood and the nova star representing a new chapter for African Americans looking ahead to a more just future.

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African American Chefs You Should Know

Before the 1970s, Aunt Jemimas pancake box carried the stereotypical image of a black cook, illustrating how the American food industry undervalued Southern cooks and cooking. Today, a new wave of African American chefs safeguard Southern foodways. As they reintroduce recipes in the nations top kitchens, they humanize how the public sees black chefs.

Fort Worth Is Looking To Preserve And Celebrate Its African American History

A panel of experts gathered for a three-day workshop to discuss the proposed project. Their findings were presented on Thursday to the public.

At a public forum held Thursday, officials and residents discussed the proposal to build an African-American museum in Fort Worth and the need for community involvement.

Sociology professor Jason Shelton from the University of Texas at Arlington moderated the discussion and presentation of findings from a community engagement task force. He wants members of Fort Worths Black community to be involved in the decision-making process because telling their stories is important.

Shelton says the project, must preserve and present the history and culture of African Americans with an emphasis on the stories of African Americans in Fort Worth.

Whether the establishment will be a museum or cultural center is still undecided. There are plans for community outreach and additional forums to help cement that decision soon. Wyona Lynch-McWhite, senior vice president of the Arts Consulting Group that advises communities on such projects, says the community connections are astounding.

As a person of color hearing the stories of people who have been so instrumental to these communities growth and thriving and now these connections across the world I cant wait to see what happens next, Lynch-McWhite said.

Got a tip? Email Solomon Wilson at You can follow Solomon on Twitter @SolomonSeesIt.

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What Has Happened So Far

The Butler Place advisory committee suggested a museum to preserve local, Black history. The museum steering committee came to fruition.

The University of Texas at Arlington conducted surveys of about 90 community members, showing that the majority of them expressed interest in a combination of museum and cultural center.

The museum committee held a community workshop along with a panel of museum experts. The committee concluded that there was a strong interest in the community of the project.The African American Museum and Cultural Center became a nonprofit organization. Fort Worth City Council allocated $40,000 to the nonprofit June 28.

John Barnett Jr. is the chair of the museum nonprofit. The museum does not have a projected completion date, Barnett said. The nonprofit is taking one step at a time, he added.Hopefully, break ground within a year or two, Perera said.

Museum In The Cultural District

Patrice Angwenyi recently opened the coffee shop HustleBlendz, 1201 Evans Ave., in March. Even though Angwenyi was born and raised in the 76104 ZIP code, she thinks the proposed museum should be located in the Cultural District.

The museum will serve as a symbol for African Americans in the Cultural District, an area where Black history hasnt been well-represented, she said.I believe being there makes more of a statement, Angwenyi said.

The Cultural District is in the 76107 ZIP code. The median household income is $67,844 higher than the statewide average of $63,826. About 11.4% of the population falls below the poverty line, according to census.

If the proposed museum is built in the Cultural District, it would strengthen tourism and the economy, said Jon Meyers, a partner at the consulting firm HR& A Advisors Inc.

Meyers has over 10 years of experience working with public and private sectors on financing and implementing real estate projects, with a focus on economic analysis. In 2021, Meyers authored a study, in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania, on the economic and social impacts of libraries and museums.

In 2021, Amon Carter Museum of American Art had an overall economic impact of nearly $15 million, according to a museum report. The Carter Museum generated over $620,800 in local government revenue and more than $754,500 in state government revenue.

Grouping museums together is a common strategy, Meyers said.

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The Lenora Rolla Heritage Center Museum

• 1020 E. Humbolt Street

The Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society is proud to announce the opening of their Lenora Rolla Heritage Center Museum in the historic Boone House. The newly restored house is a valuable asset to the city of Fort Worth as a venue for future exhibitions highlighting African American culture and also as a space in which the local community can gather to celebrate shared heritage. In addition, the Boone House will serve as a research facility, maintaining the Society’s extensive historical records.To make an appointment to view the collection, please email info@tarrantcountyblackhistory.org.

National Juneteenth Museum Takes Shape In Fort Worth

The brainchild of Opal Lee, the institution will be part of an economic development project aimed at revitalizing the citys Historic Southside neighborhood.

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By Robin Pogrebin

In 2016, at 89, Opal Lee walked from her home in Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., to help get Juneteenth made a federal holiday, which it finally was in 2021. And for nearly 20 years, she has operated a modest Juneteenth Museum in a property on Rosedale Street, which also served as a filming location for the 2020 movie Miss Juneteenth.

But Lee, now 95 and known as the grandmother of Juneteenth or more affectionately as Ms. Opal wanted a more permanent institution that would commemorate the holiday that celebrates the end of slavery in the United States.

That vision is getting closer to reality as plans move forward for the National Juneteenth Museum, a $70 million project that aims to put a shovel in the ground before the end of the year and to open in time for the Juneteenth holiday in 2024.

The plans are beautiful. Its off the chain, Lee said in an interview. Juneteenth means freedom to me. We want people to understand the past, we dont want it watered down.

The museum is initially projecting annual attendance of 35,000 with a 10 percent increase each year, Howard said.

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Black Every Day: Photographs From The Carter Collection

Second floor

This exhibition explores over a century of photographic representations of Black Americans as represented in the Carter collection. Instead of focusing on major historical events or contemporary images of strife and violence, Black Every Day explores the fullness and richness of Black culture, addressing themes of community, excellence, family, and labor.

Explore Black Every Day from the comfort of your home with our virtual exhibition experience!

More than 100 vernacular images by unidentified photographers join over 50 works by iconic artists including Roy DeCarava, Dorothea Lange, Deana Lawson, Gordon Parks, James Van Der Zee, and Garry Winogrand. Through this range of perspectives, Black Every Day focuses on moments of Black life that often go unacknowledged. It features people celebrating, gathering, innovating, working, and worshipping, explicitly and solely focusing on communities who dont always see their experiences reflected on museum walls.

Primary And Secondary Schools

In the era before the racial integration of schools, Dallas Independent School District had five high schools for blacks: Booker T. Washington, Lincoln, James Madison, and two others for a brief period: Franklin D. Roosevelt, and L. G. Pinkston. Other schools for black children included George Washington Carver Elementary School , Benjamin Franklin Darrell Elementary School, Frederick Douglass Elementary School, Eagle Ford Elementary School, Joseph J. Rhoads Elementary School, H.S. Thompson Elementary School, Phyllis Wheatley Elementary School, and Colonial School.

The Catholic church operated St. Peter’s Academy for black children in Dallas.

Carrollton Colored School was the school for black children in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District in the segregation era.

Post-segregation

Around 2005 increasing numbers of African-American students attended schools in the Best Southwest area. Wealthier African-American parents often moved to different school districts to get perceived better educations for their children. Around that same time period increasing numbers of wealthier African-American families were sending their children to private schools in 2001 there were 5,400 black students in the region’s private schools.

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Museum In The Historic Southside

Johnny Lewis has lived in the Historic Southside for almost 50 years. He is the vice president of the Historic Southside Neighborhood Association. He hopes the museum will be located in his neighborhood on Evans Avenue.

was the heart of what was once the Black community, Lewis said. Evans Avenue was almost like a Black Wall Street. It never got that big, but it could.

Council member Chris Nettles represents the Historic Southside. Nettles wants the museum to be built in a historically Black neighborhood, even if its not in the Southside. Residents want to teach their children about their history, culture and ancestors, Nettles said.

What greater place for it to be than in an African American historical neighborhood, Nettles said.

Apart from the educational impact, Nettles also sees the museum as an anchor for boosting the neighborhoods economy.

Nettles has heard concerns from community members on whether the museum would survive in the Historic Southside, where it would be isolated from other museums in the Cultural District. Nettles disagrees.

The National Juneteenth Museum, which is set to be completed in 2025, is planned to be built on Evans and Rosedale avenues in the Historic Southside neighborhood. The Juneteenth Museum will be a multi-purpose facility. The building will act as a museum, provide co-working spaces and house food vendors of different cultures, Nettles said.

Museum As A Symbol Of Representation

Angwenyi said she did not see many infrastructures of representation growing up on the citys Southside. For her, the most significant symbol of representation in the community she saw growing up was the establishment of the Ella Mae Shamblee Library in 2008.

Ella Mae Shamblee was Fort Worths first Black librarian. She delivered books to other African Americans in south Fort Worth, during a time when Black people were not allowed to sit in libraries.

The library was the first time Angwenyi learned about the history of her community, she said.

W. Marvin Dulaney is a retired professor of African American history who taught at the University of Texas at Arlington for about 20 years.

Museums play a unique role as an education institution in society, Dulaney said. Dulaney has served as the deputy director and chief operations officer at the African American Museum of Dallas.

Ive been teaching all together for about 42 years, Dulaney said. And Ive found that I can actually reach more people, teach more people and have them understand information much better at a museum than I can in the classroom.

Museums showcase images, artifacts and maps among other things on a regular basis that Dulaney couldnt do in classrooms. In classrooms, students are more focused on their grades than actual learning, he said.

The proposed museum would fill the gaps of African American history in Fort Worth that local public schools may have missed in the classrooms, he said.

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History Of African Americans In Dallasfort Worth

The DallasFort Worth metroplex has 1.2 million African-Americans, the 2nd-largest metro population of African-Americans in Texas.

In 2007, Black Enterprise magazine ranked Dallas as a “Top 10 city for African-Americans”.

Lenora Rolla Heritage Center Museum

The Lenora Rolla Heritage Center Museum is a museum in Fort Worth, Texas that focuses on the history of African Americans in Tarrant County and throughout Texas. It is named for Lenora Rolla who initially raised money to purchase the building and start the museum in 1979. It is operated in the historic Boone House and open by appointment with the Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society.

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Here Are 7 Upcoming Events In Lewisville And Coppell

3:00 PM Jan 18, 2023 CSTUpdated4:14 PM Jan 18, 2023 CST

Teenagers can craft their own multi-purpose reusable canvas tote bag on Jan. 25 at the Cozby Library. Paint will be supplied.

Join Us For State Of The Arts At The Kimbell Friday To Learn More About The National Juneteenth Museum The Fort Worth African American Museum And The Fred Rouse Center For Arts And Community Healing

Three new cultural centers and museums are in different stages of development in Fort Worth. All three will address African-American art and history but they’ll still be very different.

Dr. John Barnett Jr. thinks this confluence of three, new, Black cultural projects getting underway will be appreciated only in the future, in hindsight the way the start of great changes are often not fully understood as they happen.

“I think we’ve reached an inflection point,” Dr. Barnett said. He’s leading the effort to build The Fort Worth African American Museum and Cultural Center.

“You know, it seems that fate has touched us, and change has come to Fort Worth.”

• Join us to hear from the leaders of all three cultural-historical projects Friday, April 29, at 6 p.m. when the Kimbell Art Museum and KERA’s Art& Seek present State of the Arts. The free conversation will be held at the Kimbell’s Piano Pavilion. Check out the details.

The leaders of all three projects worry the public may confuse them, lump all three together. In which case, why three centers? Why not just one to handle African-American history and culture and Juneteenth?

But Adam McKinney, a founding member of the Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing, argues the multiple centers reflect a strength of what’s happening here. There is no single Black culture, he says, no single Black experience.

Here’s the current status of all three efforts:

• The Fort Worth African-American Museum and Cultural Center:

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