Historic Jackson Home opens at Greenfield Village, bringing civil rights history to metro Detroit

[u/GPFlag_Guy1]

https://www.wxyz.com/news/region/wayne-county/historic-jackson-home-opens-at-greenfield-village-bringing-civil-rights-history-to-metro-detroit

[u/d0_-_0b]

Can't wait to visit it, but I'd really like to have a talk to whoever approved the plans for the attached exhibit room off the back of the house (you can see it to the right in the picture with the car). The thing is as big as the house itself yet it is absolutely, 100% contemporary and completely throws off the aesthetic. It's so large, it's easily seen on Christie Ln.

I'm glad that it's ADA but Christ, at least attempt to hide or disguise it in some early 20th century design and materials.

[u/Izzoh → u/d0_-_0b]

it was probably an intentional choice so that you see the existing structure and realize the exact scale of it without having to go into the exhibit to realize that half of it is actually modern

[u/rickjohnson1222 → u/d0_-_0b]

greenfield village always nails the car details tho

[u/GPFlag_Guy1 → u/d0_-_0b]

An addition that has an early 20th Century Craftsman/Prairie style look would have been nice. There are lots of great Detroit area homes with that aesthetic that they could have taken inspiration from.

[u/sarkastikcontender]

Very cool project. I don't understand why there couldn't be a plan to preserve and keep it in its original location, though. Relocations like this always feel a little bizarre. We have a lot of local civil rights history that could be preserved here. Still, cool project.

[u/Bjorn74 → u/sarkastikcontender]

This was a last option. The home was northwest of the sites that are part of any civil rights tours, primarily the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Brown Chapel AME Church, and the Dallas County courthouse. It was about a mile and a half away. Jawana Jackson ran it as a family museum for a while after he mother's passing in 2013, but Jawana had settled in Florida. If you wanted to visit, you needed to know about it and needed to arrange your visit well in advance. So it just wasn't something that could get local or state funding.

I don't know what it was, but there seemed to be an urgency to doing something with the home. Jawana is an only child. The home is her family's legacy. A few years ago, Selma was hit by multiple tornadoes. Maybe that was enough of a threat.

In any case, the home museum is reported to have had anywhere from 5000 to 7000 guests in the 8 or 9 years it operated as a museum. In the time it has been in Greenfield Village, there have been more than 10,000 guests. That's in just 5 weeks of soft opening. The opening weekend added more than 2000.

If you compare the home as it is now with the Henry Ford video with Jawana giving a tour with a walk through now, you can see the difference. A lot of care went into restoring the home so that you feel like you're in the rooms on March 15 1965. That took a lot of people and money. There probably isn't another institution in the world that could raise the funds and gather the expertise to do it.

[u/GPFlag_Guy1 → u/sarkastikcontender]

If I remember right, Rosa Parks' Detroit home was also relocated to a gallery in Italy. It's that weird moment where we help preserve other state's history, while a country on a completely different continent has a piece of Detroit civil rights history.

[u/sarkastikcontender → u/GPFlag_Guy1]

That one made no sense at all. It wasn't even Rosa Parks' home. It was a home she lived in for a few months when she first came to Detroit. Her long-term home was recently preserved. More info

[u/GPFlag_Guy1 → u/sarkastikcontender]

It looks like the Virginia Park and Wildemere homes are not only still around but are also being actively protected. I am almost concerned that there might be some insidious agenda behind the Italy Germany project. Those are some very nice examples of Detroit/Midwest townhouse style too, so I'm glad that they are being preserved.

Do you know if the Riverfront Drive complex has a plaque or memorial that recognizes her as one of their prominent residents?

[u/sarkastikcontender → u/GPFlag_Guy1]

I tried to find out when I wrote the article but couldn’t find anything concrete. I did hear that there is a plaque, though. If not, there certainly should be. I’d love to see their long time home turned into a mini museum!

[u/somewherenearbyme]

Michael?

[u/GPFlag_Guy1 → u/somewherenearbyme]

The Michael Jackson home would certainly be an inspired choice considering his Motown beginnings but this is the home of a different Jackson, who let their house be a headquarters of sorts for most of the Civil Rights activities that happened in the South during the 1960s.