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Selma's Historic Jackson Home - TPR's In Focus - June 9, 2026 · In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson

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  Support comes from Troy University's Trojan Cafe, offering handcrafted Starbucks beverages and a wide assortment of meal and snack options.
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  Located on Troy University's Montgomery campus, across from the Rosa Parks Library and Museum.
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  From Troy Public Radio, this is In Focus and I'm Carolyn Hutcheson.
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  The Henry Ford is a renowned Museum of History
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  located in Dearborn, Michigan.
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  This week the museum celebrates the addition of Selma's
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  historic Jackson home, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a guest of Dr. Sullivan Jackson, a
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  dentist and family friend.
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  Amber Mitchell, curator of Black History at the Henry Ford,
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  joins us with the story of their friendship and the acquisition of the Jackson home.
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  Amber, welcome to Troy Public Radio. Carolyn, thank you so much for having me.
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  You are hosting an exciting event at the Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan.
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  What's the event coming up at the end of this week? Well, on June 12th,
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  we will be reopening for the world to see the Dr. Sullivan and Mrs.
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  Richie Jean Sherratt Jackson home, a home that we acquired in
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  2023 from Miss Joanna Jackson, the home originally set at 1416 Lapsley Street in Selma, Alabama.
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  We have been in the process of restoring the home after moving it over a thousand miles from Selma to Dearborn.
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  We are looking forward to welcoming the world into a home that is central to the story of
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  voting rights in the United States.
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  Briefly remind your listeners about the Henry Ford and generally the properties that you're preserving there.
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  Sure. The Henry Ford is a collection of five different
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  organizations, all founded by Henry Ford, the automobile magnate. We first opened in 1929.
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  We include the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation,
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  Greenfield Village, which is our collection of outdoor historic buildings,
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  the Ford Rouge Factory Tour, where people can go to the River Rouge Ford plant to see
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  F-150s being made, the Benson Ford Research Center, and we also have a giant screen experience.
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  We are over 250 acres in Dearborn, Michigan and hold over 26 million artifacts in our collection.
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  You have been to Selma many times, which is where the Jackson home was located. Tell us about that experience.
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  You know, the first time I visited the Jackson home was after acquisition, after I was first hired in September of
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  2023. I mean, I had the opportunity to go there with Miss Joanna Jackson,
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  the only daughter and sole owner of the Jackson home, who a couple of years before had started
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  reaching out to the Henry Ford about the possibility of acquisition.
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  To be able to learn at her feet, to be a real partner with her, to better understand not only just what happened in the
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  home in 1965 when the world came to Selma as part of the voting rights movement, but also her family going back to
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  1866 and how critical that family was for Selma in terms of establishing a black professional class that would ultimately
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  fuel the civil rights movement and beyond.
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  It sounds like you worked with her and the townspeople to tell the story.
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  Being able to work very closely with her has been a real joy,
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  but of course also working with members of the Selma community who have been welcoming, helpful, and
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  selfless in ensuring that we have the right information, but
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  connections to people whose stories may or may not be necessarily well known.
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  Remind us of the Sullivan Jackson family and their ties to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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  So, Dr. Sullivan Jackson and his wife, Richie Jean Jackson, were close friends with Reverend Dr.
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  Martin Luther King Jr.
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  And his wife, Mrs.
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  Coretta Scott King, Mrs.
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  King and Mrs.
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  Jackson were childhood friends.
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  Mrs.
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  Jackson growing up in Selma and Mrs.
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  King, of course, growing up in Marion.
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  They reconnected after Dr.
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  King becomes the senior pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery in the 1950s.
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  They remained friends well into their adulthood.
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  And in 1964, when the Dallas County Voters League invites Dr.
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  King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that he's president of to come and join the longstanding
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  movement in Selma for voting rights, the first call he makes is to his friends, Sully and Jean, and says, can I
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  come and stay with you and several other members of my team as we're getting this effort going in Selma and
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  bringing more attention to what's happening in Selma?
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  And almost immediately that transforms not only just the trajectory of what happens in Selma ultimately, but
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  also the trajectory of this family.
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  Literally, Mrs.
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  Jackson redoes the whole house in a rush in fall of 1964 before the world comes into the home in January of 65.
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  And that has been an essential part of this story, especially as we have been restoring this home back to its 1965
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  facade. What was that process like?
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  You know, it has been a really fun process.
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  It is honestly a lot of historical detective work, a mix of looking at the photos from the home and of the family,
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  because it's really a very well-documented home and story.
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  It's just that a lot of people don't know that it's this particular house.
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  So there are these famous photos of Dr.
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  King sitting in the Jackson's living room on March 15th, 1965, watching President LBJ deliver his what we now call
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  we shall overcome speech.
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  You know, we use those photos, but then we also use family photos and those other photos as a part of this
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  acquisition. We look at different repositories that hold additional photos that may or may not have been seen by
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  the public before to be able to look at, well, how did this home look in 1965 versus years before?
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  And of course, decades after.
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  And then there's the physical actual detective work to pulling off drywall to find the original 1919 plasterwork to
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  find the paint layers, the wallpaper to find the evidence of what kind of carpet this family had a 1965 facade.
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  Literally, the Henry Ford specializes in creating an immersive experience in our Greenfield Village campus.
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  Every single one of our 85 historic homes and buildings have all been restored to a particular date to allow us to
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  be able to tell a story that we are looking to amplify.
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  And so just like the Menlo Park complex where Edison made all of his inventions and the Wright Brothers Bicycle Shop
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  and Homestead and of course, Henry Ford's birthplace, the Jackson home will be restored to its period of significance,
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  which is March 1965.
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  So how was this home transported from Selma to Dearborn, Michigan?
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  Very carefully, I will say that essentially because the Henry Ford, we've been doing historic homes and buildings for
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  over almost a hundred years, we have the technology, the skillset to move historic buildings.
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  The best practice for the field currently, unlike in Henry Ford's day, is to keep things in place.
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  But when they are at risk, the Henry Ford has stepped up to help.
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  And so what we ended up doing is unlike how Henry Ford moved his other buildings into Greenfield Village, which was
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  basically taking them apart in a controlled demolition and putting it back together like a puzzle piece.
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  What we wanted to do was to ensure that this home's integrity would be maintained.
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  So what we ended up doing was removing the roof, removing the non-period front porch, removing the rear of the home
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  that was put on after 1970, shoring up the inside, removing the front, removing the doors, moving the windows,
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  cutting the whole house in half and packaging it in two waterproof trailers and driving them up over a thousand
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  miles and putting them back together here in Greenfield Village, where they are looking wonderful like they've never
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  been touched before. Nearly 100 percent of the original furniture to 1965 are back into the home.
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  So when people enter into this house to visit, about 95 percent of that space belonged to the Jackson family.
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  They kept everything, you know, things that we had to acquire that had been lost over time.
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  Because, again, this home is over 100 years old.
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  It's built in 1919.
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  Three generations of black dentists and black educators live in this house.
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  So what we weren't able to acquire as part of the home's acquisition, we actually were able to find in a variety of different ways.
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  And luckily, those things have allowed us to tell this story.
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  So you did a lot of detective work.
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  Well, coming up at the end of this week, June 12th, is a big ceremony.
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  What's going to happen?
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  So we will be welcoming dignitaries from all over the country, including Alabama, Selma, Washington, D.C.
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  and, of course, here in Michigan, to welcome the home into Greenfield Village and open it up to the public.
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  All of this will be guided and led by Miss Joanna Jackson, who will be there to cut the ribbon.
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  A big celebration.
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  Amber, thanks for being our guest today.
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  Thanks so much for having me.
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  That was Amber Mitchell, curator of black history at the Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan.
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  More information about the museum complex can be found at the website, thehenryford.org.
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  Thanks for joining us for In Focus, which is a podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
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  I'm Carolyn Hutcheson, and this is listener supported Troy Public Radio.