Jackson House, historic civil rights home, travels to Michigan
2 min read
How do you move a historical home across the country? Slowly and very, very carefully.
The home in question, the Jackson House in Selma, Alabama, was key to the Civil Rights Movement, and was donated to The Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village in Dearborn last fall. Soon after, it made a nine-day, 1,000-mile journey to its new home.
The house served as a hub for organizers − including Martin Luther King Jr. − who were planning the Selma-to-Montgomery marches during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, when activists across the nation pushed for equal rights for African Americans and to put an end to racial segregation.
The Henry Ford Museum posted a video of the home’s trek from Alabama to Michigan on YouTube on Feb. 23.
The relocation of the house came at the request of Jawana Jackson, the Jacksons’ only child. Jackson reached out to The Henry Ford in 2022 to ask for the home to be moved to Greenfield Village to stand alongside other sites where history occurred, including the courthouse where Abraham Lincoln practiced law and the workshop where Orville and Wilbur Wright invented their first airplane.
How was the Jackson House taken apart and moved?
Last fall, the Jackson House was carefully deconstructed in Selma, Ala., and made a 1,060-mile journey to Michigan. Now, conservation efforts are ongoing as Henry Ford staff members prepare the house and its contents for their next chapter.
Deconstruction of the house began in mid-September, according to a time-lapse video of the process posted on Feb. 23 by The Henry Ford.
“I feel as if this house will finally go home,” Jawana Jackson said in the video.
Two separate film crews were on hand to document the journey that took a nearly 80,000-pound structure across multiple state lines. It took nine days of travel time.
