33-year-old meatpacker Fred Rouse was lynched on December 11, 1921, in

Fort Worth, Texas Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise. According ...

Background

In 1921, the whites-only union workers at the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in the Niles City Stockyards (now part of Fort Worth) went on strike. The owners attempted to replace them with black

strikebreakers A strikebreaker (sometimes called a scab, blackleg, or knobstick) is a person who works despite a strike. Strikebreakers are usually individuals who were not employed by the company before the trade union dispute but hired after or during the str ...

. During union protests, there was a scuffle between African-American worker Fred Rouse and some of the strikers. This resulted in Rouse firing his gun, wounding two white strikers who happened to be brothers.

Lynching

Enraged, the whites seized, beat, and stabbed him. He was presumed to be dead. However, when the police retrieved his body from the mob, they realized that he was still alive. They took him to the City & County Hospital (330 E. 4th St.). He spent several days recovering in the segregated ward, which was located in the basement. When members of the striking union heard that Rouse was still alive, a mob of about 30 men snuck into the hospital and were able to identify him by his severe skull injury. Despite the pleas of the night nurse to spare him, the mob dragged him out of the hospital in his nightgown. He was strung up on a tree at the corner of NE 12th Street and Samuels Avenue in

. The white mob took turns riddling his mutilated body with gunshots.

Aftermath

The union officially disavowed the lynching. Six suspected members of the lynch mob were later indicted, including 2 policemen, but they never went to trial.His grandfather was lynched in Fort Worth more than 100 years ago. He didn't know it until last year
/ref> The Tarrant County Coalition for Peace and Justice (TCCPJ), a nonprofit dedicated to memorializing victims of racial violence, broke ground on Saturday, December 11, 2021, for a historical marker that will stand at Rouse’s lynching site.

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References

* * - Total pages: 440 * - Total pages: 598 * * {{Lynching in the United States 1921 riots 1921 in Texas African-American history of Texas History of Phillips County, Arkansas Lynching deaths in Texas December 1921 events Protest-related deaths Racially motivated violence against African Americans Riots and civil disorder in Arkansas White American riots in the United States