Unveiling Fort Worth’s Stopping Stones

Published on June 06, 2023

Experience the dedication of the first two markers in Texas that acknowledge and memorialize enslaved people across the United States.

Event details: Fort Worth’s Log Cabin Village has been selected as a site for two Stopping Stones. The stones will be dedicated at 9 a.m. Saturday, June 10, at 2100 Log Cabin Village Lane.

Why it matters: Stopping Stones creates small memorials that commemorate individuals who were enslaved locally.

• The purpose of these memorials is to help residents realize and remember the history of slavery and to create conversations that address racial issues in our modern world.
• This is an art project started by an artist in Vermont who was inspired by similar stones memorializing those lost in the Holocaust in Germany.
• Each hand-engraved “stone” carries the name, profession and enslaved dates of an individual enslaved in that place.

In Fort Worth’s case, the two stones will bear the names of Jefferson Walton and Molly, two people enslaved at the plantation-style home through which visitors now enter the Log Cabin Village.

Program participants on Saturday will include Mayor Mattie Parker; Christina Brooks, director of the Diversity & Inclusion Department; Brenda Sanders-Wise, executive director of the Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society Inc.; Opal Lee, Nobel Prize nominee and Grandmother of Juneteenth; and Dione Sims, founder and CEO of Unity Unlimited.

There will be a dramatic storytelling by actor J.R. Bradford and artist Kenja L. Brown.

Admission to the Log Cabin Village will be free following the program on Saturday.

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