The Jackson Family Home, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stayed during the civil rights era, is being relocated to The Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, and will welcome visitors in June.

The house has been moved, rebuilt, and restored inside Greenfield Village with interiors recreated to reflect 1965, preserving King’s stay and including artifacts such as the pajamas he wore.

Opening the Jackson Family Home in Greenfield Village will involve an opening in June, with the Henry Ford preserving the site as part of its broader Civil Rights and Black history programming.

The move required partial dismantling, roof removal, and splitting the house for cross‑country transport, followed by careful reconstruction incorporating modern systems like heating, fire protection, and accessible entry.

The project acknowledges Henry Ford’s controversial legacy while presenting a holistic historical narrative and contextualizing past antisemitic and racist views within the museum setting.

The exhibit aims to connect civil rights history with regional narratives of southern migration and Black civic life, placing the King home within a broader collection of American origin stories.

Visitors will enter through the back door to reflect era‑specific safety concerns in Selma, including FBI surveillance, bomb threats, and a tapped phone line that illustrate the risks faced by King.

Conservators are displaying items from the home—clothing, kitchenware, family photographs, and a pajama set reportedly lent to King—to highlight the ordinary human side of the movement and its strategy.

Interest in the project began when Jawana Jackson approached The Henry Ford in 2021; the house was acquired in 2023, and about 9,000 everyday objects from the home are being cataloged, conserved, and prepared for display.

The installation will be integrated with Greenfield Village’s other historic sites, underscoring the King home’s role in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Black migration to the North.

Jawana Jackson donated the house to The Henry Ford in 2021; the move involved partial dismantling, removing the roof and porch, and splitting the structure for transport across roughly 900 miles.

To transport the house, the structure was partially dismantled, with the roof removed, a 1970s addition removed, and the two halves moved on specialized trucks across nearly 900 miles.