The Henry Ford Museum moved the Jackson Home from Selma to Dearborn. The museum is planned to open next summer. Photo: Samuel Robinson
Martin Luther King Jr., who turned a middle class Black family’s home in Selma, Alabama, into a hub for Civil Rights Era planning and strategy, once came to the steps of that home all by himself.
The house was a meeting place King’s staff and local leaders. Typically the reverend would come to the house accompanied by a cluster of young staffers.
But this time, he was alone.
“I am so tired, and your house is the only place I could think of where I can be left alone, get some sleep, and be by myself to think,” King told the late Richie Jean Sherrod Jackson, she writes in her book, “The House by the Side of the Road.”
She lived at the house with her husband, Dr. Sullivan Jackson, a dentist. Jackson, an educator, died in 2013.
The Jackson home is where King organized and strategized the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery marches. It’s where King watched President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “We shall overcome” speech that preempted the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
And now, the home sits on the Henry Ford Museum’s Greenfield Village in Dearborn.
Leaders at the museum invited media to its Dearborn campus Wednesday to show off their latest acquisition as part of a presentation on the history of the home and the museum’s current progress.
Moving the house from Alabama to Michigan in 2023 was a $30 million task that required a tremendous amount of logistics, said Henry Ford Museum president and CEO Patricia Mooradian.
The house operated as a museum in Selma operated by Jackson’s daughter, Joanna Jackson, for about a decade. It is set to open to the public in June 2026, with a three-day block party planned for the opening.
Mooradian said Jackson reached out to the museum several years ago in attempt for support. After months of talks, it was determined the only way to get the most amount of people inside the home while keeping it well maintained was permanently moving it to Michigan.
“Joanna, during this presentation was calling him ‘Uncle Martin.’ When she first said it, I was thinking, ‘Why does she think I know who Uncle Martin is? And then it occurred to me that she’s calling Dr. King, Uncle Martin,” Mooradian said. “We believe we had an obligation to preserve this home so this story can be told to the world. The house represents conflicts we continue to face and civil liberties we continue to fight for. It’s our job to elevate these stories with good public history — the facts — so that we can inspire the next generation of thinkers and doers.”
King would stay at the house for weeks on end, working with community members and his colleagues at the house. Local leaders like Amelia Boynton, the Rev. Dr. Frederick D. Reese, and the Dallas County Voters League met at the house to strategize how to drum up nationwide support for their efforts to register Black voters
National groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later Southern Christian Leadership Conference helped bring international attention to Selma and the effort to register Black voters. Hundreds of people came through the home, including Nobel Peace Prize winners and international dignitaries.
State money is going toward the home’s restoration. The Michigan Strategic Fund approved a $9 million bond during an Aug. 26 board meeting for the restoration of the home. The bond will pay for installing the home into a permanent position at as well and furnishing a new 1,500-square-foot annex attached to the home, according to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.
“The Jackson Home serves as a unique time capsule documenting one of the most momentous movements in U.S. history, the Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights marches,” the MEDC wrote in a release. “Through thoughtfully curated exhibits and immersive storytelling, the Jackson Home will provide visitors with enriching experiences that highlight the powerful legacy of the civil rights movement.”
The Henry Ford is working on programming for touring guests through the historic home, which was placed on Maple Lane near the Logan County Courthouse in Greenfield Village where Abraham Lincoln practiced law.
Greenfield Village, an open air museum created by Henry Ford, is home to one of the most significant collections documenting the American experience anywhere in the country.
About Post Author
