- Welcome to American Black Journal.

I'm Stephen Henderson, your host.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of several milestones in the Civil Rights Movement.

The Selma to Montgomery Marches, President Lyndon Johnson's "We Shall Overcome" speech, and the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

They all took place in 1965.

Now, a major piece of that history has arrived at the Henry Ford's Greenfield Village.

The Selma, Alabama home that served as a sanctuary and strategic hub for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders has been moved to the museum and it's gonna open next year as a permanent exhibit.

Really exciting news.

Here to tell us more about this important landmark is the President and CEO of the Henry Ford, Patricia Mooradian, along with the Henry Ford's curator of Black history, Amber Mitchell.

Welcome both of you to American Black Journal.

- Thanks for having us.

- This is such exciting news.

Let's start with what this house is.

I don't think a lot of folks who even know much about Martin Luther King Jr. or the Civil Rights Movement know about this house.

Amber, I'll start with you.

Why is this, why is this an important symbol?

- Absolutely.

What a great question.

So the Jackson Home, the Dr. Sullivan and Richie Jean share at Jackson Home was the home of a family, most importantly, a family who opened up their doors to their close personal friend, Dr. Martin Luther King, in 1965, as well as his lieutenants as part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to help coordinate what became the Selma to Montgomery Marches of 1965 and help plan out the Voting Rights Act.

Essentially, what this family did is take it on the chin, essentially, for a lot of Americans during this time period, welcoming in who, you know, this person who was a great friend to them, but for many others was public enemy number one.

This is him also coming on the backs of many other organizers that are already there in Selma.

But I think what makes this story really interesting and really rich is that it's a story of an ordinary everyday family who did something extraordinary, but also it allows us to talk about this really interesting intersection of justice, family and community, all under the lens of American citizenship.

- Yeah.

And now it's ours.

It's in our community permanently.

- It is.

We got a call from Joanna Jackson.

Joanna is the daughter of Dr. Sullivan Jackson and Richie Jean Jackson.

And she's the only child and she wanted to preserve this house in perpetuity.

Her parents had since passed.

She doesn't live in Selma, and she grew up in this home, she understands the significance, and her family, incredible story, not just what they did as Amber said, but that they preserved the things that were there from that time period.

They understood the significance of it.

And Joanna made a promise to her parents that she would do whatever she could to preserve the stories of the home.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And she did for many years on her own.

She would travel back and forth meeting visitors and giving them tours.

And pretty much out of the blue, we got a call from Joanna in February of '22 and she very passionately explained the significance of this home and what her ideas were to preserve it.

And she basically said, Patricia, this home belongs in Greenfield Village.

And, you know, we took it from there.

And we really did a lot of homework and a lot of research.

So it didn't actually leave Selma until the end of '23, and now it's being restored in Greenfield Village.

- Yeah.

You have other important markers from this time at the museum.

- We do.

- I'm not sure everyone knows about that, but, of course, I've been to the museum and sat on the bus where Rosa Parks also sat in Montgomery.

- And we're an American history museum.

- Yeah.

- We tell the stories of American innovation and we consider social transformation and American innovation.

And so we tell the story of freedom and our rights as citizens for freedom in this country, democracy in an exhibit called With Liberty and Justice For All, and that's where the Rosa Parks bus is.

That's where we tell some of the things, stories about civil rights.

There are tremendous connections to what happened in 1955 with the bus to what happened in 1965 with this home.

- Yeah.

- Absolutely.

- And so those, I imagine that's what you're hard at work doing is trying to figure out where this new piece fits in with all these others.

- Absolutely.

I mean, in addition to obviously our huge collection in the Henry Ford Museum, we also have several other sites in Greenfield Village that I think a lot of people kind of don't really get that we have several other things related to African American history.

And so between Susquehanna Plantation way at the far end of Maple Lane in Greenfield Village to what's now the home of the Jackson Home, we're able to tell nearly 200 years of African American history on one lane, in one institution in a variety of different stories, which is very exciting.

I think it's really awesome with the Jackson Home in particular, that it allows us to tell a much more recent story than I think any other place in Greenfield Village has.

Our period of significance is 1965.

So this house is gonna have a TV in it.

This house is gonna have electricity.

This house is gonna be decorated for Christmas.

How a lot of people still have that living memory of.

So it's really exciting in multiple ways on top of being able to talk about this important event as it relates to American history, and again, an African American family that is a professional family, that comes from a professional class of people.

And it looks a little bit different than I think for a lot of our visitors in understanding the diversity that is African American experiences.

- Yeah, yeah.

You were talking about the things that have been preserved, the daughter has spent a lot of time making sure they're preserved, what are some of those things?

- Absolutely.

So, oh, it is a wonderful treasure trove, to be honest.

Probably the most important piece, or one of the most important pieces is the chair that Dr. Martin Luther King sat in on the night of March 15th 1965, as Lyndon Baines Johnson delivered his "We Shall Overcome" speech.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And we have photos of Dr. King in that living room, as well as all the other people who were in that living room and all of the things in it.

And so using a combination of the things that the family has held onto, family records, photos, family photos, as well as press photos, because this is a very well-documented event, it's a very well-documented house, we're able to see like the vast majority of these things are all original.

They're all here and they're all gonna be going back into the house when it opens in summer 2026.

So it is, we're doing some really awesome history detective work when it comes to bringing the house back to life.

- That's right.

- Yeah.

- Because, you know, it was well-loved and well-lived in until 2013 or so, before it became a museum on its own.

So it is real important work, but it's also just really cool to be able to bring a more modern story to Greenfield Village.

- Sure, sure.

- And the fact that the family knew the significance and saved all these things.

- And saved those things, right?

- They saved these things.

We've even found, for instance, if they recovered or reupholstered a chair, they saved the original fabric underneath.

So we're finding the fabrics that were used, we're finding wallpaper on the walls.

It's an incredible history that's coming to life.

And our curators and our conservators, like Amber just said, they're like detectives and they're matching up the treasure trove of photographs with the things that we're finding in the collection, because when we moved the house, everything came with it.

- Right, right.

- Exactly.

And I will say we also, you know, have the awesome opportunity of having Ms. Richie Jean's voice.

She wrote a book about her family's experiences in the home called The House by the Side of the Road.

And if you wanna know what our interpretation is, just pick up that book.

- [Stephen] That's very amusing.

- Because she walks us through every room.

She walks us through that whole time period.

And we don't often get to have a narrative of not only the person who lived in the house and experienced this, but also their daughter who also was there.

- Right.

- [Stephen] Right, right.

- She was there.

She was a little girl.

- Right.

- So the very first meeting we had with her, and we were on a Zoom call 'cause it was still kind of that COVID time period, right?

So we did a Zoom call.

And she was referring to her Uncle Martin.

And it took me a second, I thought, wait a minute.

- She's saying Uncle Martin Luther King.

- She's got, yeah.

That's my Uncle Martin.

- Right.

- So there are some wonderful pictures and she has a lot of very, very fond memories of Dr. King.

And a lot of the people that were in her home during that time period.

- Yeah.

- But it was also a scary time for them.

- Yes.

- So, you know, you describe this moment where she just kind of reaches out to the Henry Ford and says, this is the place that I think this should be.

I mean, that's such a testament to the museum's power across the country, not just here in Southeast Michigan.

- Well, my first question was how did you find out about us?

How did you know about us?

And she actually had some friends that were working with her that were in the museum research area and curatorial area, and they were doing a little digging.

But there was an interesting story.

She was giving a tour to an attorney who works in the civil rights world in Washington DC and he had brought some of his students down.

He teaches too.

And they toured the house in Selma and he pulled her aside and he said, this house belongs in Greenfield Village.

So he whispered this to her a few years before she called us.

- Wow.

- And it got her thinking.

And then her curator colleagues also did some research.

She really did her homework.

- Yeah.

- She knew what we could do and she knew that the story needed to be told and it needed to be preserved.

- Yeah.

- And that's what we know we can do in Greenfield Village.

We have been taking care of historic structures for almost a hundred years now.

- Right.

- Well, and introducing especially young people to those ideas.

I can remember as school child to student here in the 1970s and '80s going to Greenfield Village, going to the Henry Ford and learning about these things for the first time.

I mean, it's such a great thing to have in the community, just for that.

I mean, of course, adults go all the time.

Now, as an adult, I take my children.

- Right, right, right.

- Or when they were children.

- Our job is to tell good public history.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- Our job is to tell history as fact.

But what we really are interested in is the future.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- So the future is, you know, is important.

And our real mission is to use these incredible artifacts, these incredible stories of innovation, of ingenuity, of resourcefulness, people's resourcefulness, in order for people to connect the dots.

- This is gonna open in summer of '26.

Talk about what that day will be like for you and the other curators.

- Sure.

So I think for all of us, curatorial collections, marketing, interpreters, visitor services, we all are gonna be extremely, not only just excited, but a little exhausted because, you know, the work is intense and we are, you know, using our very specific skill sets to make sure that not only are we doing this history right in terms of interpreting it, but that we're telling a story that the Jacksons can be proud of.

That we, when we open up the doors, you know, when Ms. Joanna most especially to me, walks in, that she feels like, yep, my mom is here, yep, my dad is here, and that their stories are being stewarded in the right way.

And so it is a real humbling experience.

It's a proud experience and we are so excited to be able to share this story and in the perpetuity with the world at a time where it can't be even more relevant.

- Yeah.

Patricia and Amber, congratulations.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- On this project.

It's gonna be amazing.

But thanks for being here on American Black Journal.

- Thanks.

We're so honored to not only be here, but to bring these stories to life.

Thank you.

- Thank you.