We Got The Funk

06/12/2024

06/12/2024

06/02/2024

More Fort Worth history

The Tuesday afternoon sun shines on the faces of chuckling men standing under the Carver-Hamilton Elementary School sign in the Butler Place public housing complex.

To the west, Fort Worth’s downtown skyline rises over Interstate 35W. The interstate, U.S. Highway 287 to the east and Interstate 30 to the south form a triangular boundary around the red brick complex, which is now abandoned.

The men walk two blocks south from 13th Street to the corner of Luella Street and Stephenson Street. The buildings that were once home to hundreds of families now have boarded up windows and doors. The roofs have caved in on some of the apartments.

Donald “D Ray” Elder, 45, wears a “Brick Born” T-shirt that has a stencil in the shape of Texas with the roofs of Butler Place homes inside the graphic. He points out the empty corner lot where the building in which he used to live once stood. Four generations of his family lived in Butler Place. Elder, his mother and grandmother lived adjacent to where his great-grandmother stayed.

The projects represented freedom to Elder. When he was younger, he and his friends hoped the grass wouldn’t be cut on what they called Pork Chop Hill, going from Luella Street down to I.M. Terrell Way Circle North. They slid down the hill on pieces of cardboard, and long grass meant a better ride. Other freedoms included finding a quarter to take the bus to the mall at the former Tandy Center downtown (once the corporate headquarters for Radio Shack, formerly Tandy) or going to the neighborhood store with a list of things to buy.

These are experiences his own children don’t necessarily understand, but they shaped who he is today. And they are tethered to Butler Place.

“We try to make sure that we don’t get too attached because we know it’s no longer open,” Elder said. “It’s not going to come back, so there is a little part of us grieving as well, the nostalgia of it. So we come back to remember.”

Read the front-page story from racial equity reporter Kamal Morgan → https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/fort-worth/article287819510.html

Check out today’s eEdition → https://www.star-telegram.com/e-edition/today

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