April 4, 2024

Please just look at a map

It does actually matter where the Juneteenth museum is supposed to be.

An astute Lost in Panther City reader1 pointed out that last week’s Times of London tourism article about Fort Worth was not only annoying, it was also factually wrong about the location of the forthcoming Juneteenth museum. Take a look:

Near Southside still has a welcome whiff of the local secret about it, but that won’t last for long. Its first luxury boutique hotel, the Nobleman, is set to open at the end of 2024, closely followed by the National Juneteenth Museum, a cultural centre charting the path to freedom for enslaved people in the US, bringing international attention to this understated neighbourhood

But the museum won't be in Near Southside! It’s coming to the Historic Southside!

Those two names may seem interchangeable to anyone who doesn't live here, like for example the editors of a British newspaper. Yet it's a distinction that does matter.

Historic Southside, which is east of I-35W, has endured decades of neglect and racist disinvestment. Near Southside, its across-the-interstate neighbor, has not always been prosperous, but one area has clearly benefited from significant investments while the other has seen the city’s repeated promises to revitalize the neighborhood go unfulfilled.

That’s a key part of the Juneteenth museum’s pitch: It’s supposed to be an anchor of positive redevelopment for an area that’s been ignored and neglected. Confusing the two neighborhoods because you didn’t look at a map is more than mildly embarrassing; it’s also very in line with how white people have always treated the Historic Southside.

Speaking of maps, I have another not-unrelated grievance to air: I feel quite strongly that the folks behind the Juneteenth museum need to actually address the fact that they're promising a building that cannot currently exist. The Fort Worth Report documented, in a detailed story back in February, that a portion of the land the museum includes in its planning documents is owned by people who are (1) unaffiliated with the museum and (2) clearly uninterested in parting with their property:

A soaring golden roof, star-shaped courtyard and an amphitheater are just a portion of the National Juneteenth Museum’s plans for Fort Worth’s Historic Southside neighborhood.

Before museum officials can realize this vision, however, they must address a looming challenge: Part of the proposed museum sits on land the nonprofit does not own — and the brothers who own the land are not interested in selling.

“We’ll contribute something to this (project) for the community, but (the lot) is not for sale,” Dorian Villegas, who owns the land with his brother, said. “We were very clear. We’re not selling. It took us a long time to buy these.”

This story did not receive the attention it deserved when it published. There have been numerous positive stories about the museum since the Fort Worth Report article dropped and none of those even glanced in its direction. To my knowledge, the only other news outlet that has followed up and asked National Juneteenth Museum CEO Jarred Howard what he plans to do is WFAA, which published something in late March. But the TV station didn’t even get the full story: It talked about only two of the four lots the museum has attempted to buy.

If you go back and watch Howard’s original presentation to the Fort Worth city council about the project — which I did — you’ll see he was honest about the fact that the museum didn’t own all the property it needed. But he also told council members that the museum’s groundbreaking would happen by the first quarter of 2023. That was the “worst-case scenario,” he said then.

Well, it’s now the second quarter of 2024. The groundbreaking hasn’t happened yet. And it seems extremely plausible to me that the project has been delayed, at least in part, because the folks behind the museum publicly committed to a vision and design for the site before they knew for certain whether they could deliver.

The Juneteenth museum’s plans may not seem like the most important thing in the world or even the most important thing in Fort Worth. But so many institutions — the city of Fort Worth, BNSF, Bank of America — seem eager to launder their reputations by pouring millions of dollars into the project. I would like this museum to succeed, and the people financially backing it should at least make sure the plans they’re supporting are in touch with reality.