The Dr. Sullivan and Mrs. Richie Jean Sherrod Jackson Home stood at 1416 Lapsley Street in Selma, Alabama, for more than a century before beginning an unlikely journey to Dearborn, Michigan.
Built in 1919, the home was the residence of several generations of Black professionals, including dentists and educators. In 1965, it also became a refuge, meeting place and center of activity during a pivotal period in the Civil Rights Movement.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stayed there while working alongside local leaders and activists in the campaign for voting rights. Civil rights leaders, dignitaries and supporters passed through its doors. Meetings took place there. Meals were shared there. King spoke with President Lyndon B. Johnson from the home and watched Johnson’s nationally televised “We Shall Overcome” address from its living room.
Today, that home stands in Greenfield Village at The Henry Ford, where it opened to visitors in June as the first home added to the village in more than 40 years.
But the home’s significance extends beyond the prominent civil rights leaders who gathered there.
“The Jacksons demonstrated extraordinary courage,” says Amber Mitchell, curator of Black History at The Henry Ford. “They opened their doors to strangers so the fight for equal rights in the United States could continue.”
THE JACKSON HOUSE
The home belonged to Dr. Sullivan Jackson, a dentist, and Richie Jean Sherrod Jackson, an educator. King was a close friend of the family, and their home offered something essential during the Selma movement: a safe place to stay, meet and strategize at a time when Black travelers could not expect to find accommodations elsewhere.
Designed by Wallace Rayfield, one of the earliest licensed Black architects in the United States, the home also tells the story of generations of Black professional and middle-class life in Selma.
“There’s so much history in it,” Mitchell says. “It’s home to several generations of Black dentists and Black educators. It’s part of the professional and middle class, and it leads us into the story of a family that had the wealth and means to feed a movement and make change.”
By early 1965, that family home had become a gathering place for people involved in the movement from around the country and beyond.
“The world comes to Selma, and the world comes to the Jackson Home,” Mitchell says.
Among those connected to the home during the movement were Malcolm X, labor leader Walter Reuther, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Dr. Ralph Bunche, the diplomat and first Black recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The home hosted the only known meeting between Bunche and King, the first two Black Nobel Peace Prize recipients.
One of its most documented moments came on March 15, 1965.
That morning, King attended the funeral of Rev. James Reeb, a white minister who had traveled to Selma in support of voting rights and was murdered after being attacked there. That evening, King watched from the Jacksons’ living room as President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed Congress and the nation, calling for voting rights legislation and invoking the language of the movement with the words “we shall overcome.”
MOVING THE HOUSE
More than five decades later, it was the Jacksons’ daughter, Jawana Jackson, who began the process that would ultimately bring the home to Michigan.
Jackson had operated her family’s home as a museum in Selma for years, but she was thinking about its long-term future and looking for an institution capable of stewarding the home and its history.
The connection to The Henry Ford came in an unexpectedly Detroit way.
“A native Detroiter had gone on a tour of the home and told her about The Henry Ford,” Mitchell says. “She did her research and thought, yes, this is the type of place.”
Jackson contacted The Henry Ford in 2022, but the answer was not immediate.
Moving historic buildings is no longer necessarily considered preservation best practice, Mitchell says, and removing a home so deeply connected to Selma raised difficult questions.
“It took a lot of deep work to figure out the options,” she says. “How do we maintain the integrity?”
There were practical questions as well. The last home added to Greenfield Village had arrived more than 40 years earlier. Could a house constructed for Alabama’s climate be successfully preserved in Michigan? Could The Henry Ford accommodate the thousands of objects the Jackson family wanted kept with it? Did the institution have the staffing and financial resources required to turn a private residence into a museum experience and support the educational programming around it?
For Jawana Jackson, keeping those pieces together was critical. Three generations had lived in the home between 1919 and 2013, and thousands of family possessions remained with it.
“She wanted to maintain all of those things together,” Mitchell says.
The Henry Ford ultimately agreed to acquire the home and its contents in 2023. Mitchell, who was hired that fall to serve as curator of Black History and work on the project, says the scale of the undertaking required a significant institutional commitment.
“Moving a house is expensive,” she says. “We’re still fundraising. Creating programming and educational materials – a lot of work goes into it. But Black history is worth the investment.”
Rather than dismantling the 1919 Southern bungalow piece by piece, the team removed later additions and other elements, including the roof and an altered front porch, reinforced the structure and cut the house into two sections for transport.
Each half then made the roughly 1,000-mile journey north separately. The first trip took 11 days and the second nine, Mitchell says, with the move requiring navigation through multiple jurisdictions with different road and weight requirements, along with police escorts and security.
Once in Michigan, the house spent its first winter stored in an airplane hangar while The Henry Ford prepared its permanent site and constructed the foundation and museum infrastructure it would need.
Moving the structure was only part of the process – thousands of photographs, documents, books, furnishings and ordinary household objects traveled with it. About 95% of the items visitors now encounter in the home are original to the Jackson family, Mitchell says.
“Those objects are critical to telling the story,” she says. “We specialize in immersive experiences. You’re there in the era we’re talking about.”
That includes the family’s furniture and the objects associated with the events of 1965. An adjacent interpretive space provides historical context, allowing the house itself to retain the character of a family residence.
THE JACKSONS
Mitchell says the result also brings Greenfield Village considerably deeper into the 20th century.
“This is 1965,” Mitchell says. “It’s a much more modern experience for many people. There are two bathrooms. There’s electricity. There’s indoor plumbing. It’s a sensory-heavy house. The TVs are going, the radio is going. You can feel and hear it.”
The story also has deep ties to Detroit.
She points to the migration connection between Alabama and Detroit and to the Detroiters who traveled south to participate in the Selma movement. Among them was Viola Liuzzo, the Detroit mother of five and Wayne State University student who was murdered in Alabama after traveling there to support the voting rights campaign.
For Mitchell, the Jackson Home is also a reminder of the role people can play in their own communities.
“The story of voting in the United States will never be over,” Mitchell says. “There is constant expansion and contraction. And I think what this story reminds us is that everybody has a role to play in making things better. You don’t have to be Martin Luther King to do it.”
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