Texas Turns Former KKK Hall into Arts Center, Because Quarantine of Hate Needed a Makeover
KEY POINTS
- •Activists in Fort Worth are converting the former KKK Klavern No. 101 auditorium into a community arts center honoring a Black lynching victim.
- •Similar projects nationwide include Laurens, SC’s Echo Project, New Orleans’ Tate Etienne & Prevost Center, and the Emmett Till barn memorial in Mississippi.
- •These initiatives clash with the Trump administration’s 2025 order to sanitize 'divisive' history, prompting local communities to preserve fuller stories.
In Fort Worth, Texas, the former KKK Klavern No. 101—once a VIP hotspot for intolerance targeting Black Americans, Latinos, Catholics, and Jews—is getting a glow-up as Transform 1012 rebrands it into an arts and community center honoring a Black lynching victim. Meanwhile, across the country, racist landmarks are getting the cultural overhaul treatment: From Laurens, South Carolina's KKK museum-turned-antihate education 'Echo Project,' to New Orleans morphing a segregated school into the Tate Etienne & Prevost Center with civil rights exhibits and senior housing. Even Mississippi's Emmett Till barn is becoming a PTSD-friendly memorial. All this rebellion against Trump's 2025 executive order to sanitize history—because apparently 'uplifting' means selective amnesia. As Patrick Weems says, society must 'sit with the worst of our humanity'—preferably in an arts center formerly reserved for hatred.
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(1 of 3)Turning a Ku Klux Klan hall into an arts center is like renovating a haunted house into a cozy Airbnb—only with more emotional baggage and less charm.
Who knew the worst house party in Texas history would become the hottest ticket for reparative justice and community healing?
Trump’s 'uplifting' history faces local sabotage as KKK hangouts get repurposed into love classrooms. Take that, rewriting history!
Source: Axios | Published: 7/13/2026 | Author: Russell Contreras
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