The Henry Ford Museum will take over the preservation of the home where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. planned civil rights actions in Alabama and Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois had their legendary “fireside chats” about the progress of The Culture, the Detroit News reported.
The museum will dismantle the 3,000-square-foot Jackson House and move it from Selma, Alabama to Greenfield Village in Dearborn. The house, once rebuilt, will also contain “King’s neckties and pajamas, and the chair where he sat while watching Johnson’s televised announcement of the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” said the Detroit News.
The home will join the courthouse where former president Abraham Lincoln first practiced law that’s located on the site. It will take about three years to rebuild and be open to the public.
The Jackson House was owned by dentist Sullivan Jackson and his wife, Richie Jean. Their daughter, Jawana—who affectionately called Dr. King “Uncle Martin”—approached Henry Ford Museum to take over preserving the home.
“It became increasingly clearer to me that the house belonged to the world, and quite frankly, The Henry Ford was the place that I always felt in my heart that it needed to be,” she told The Associated Press last week from her home in Pensacola, Florida.
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