Jackson Village

Completely renovated in April, 2022, this property has been named in honor of Jimmie Lee Jackson. On the evening of February 18, 1965, Jackson and a group of civil rights activists gathered at Zion United Methodist church in Marion, Alabama, for a night march in support of James Orange, the recently arrested field secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. As the demonstration started the protesters were met by Alabama State Troopers who ordered the crowd to disperse and then attacked the protesters. Jimmie Lee Jackson, his mother Viola Jackson and his 82-year-old grandfather, Cager Lee, were among those who fled the escalating violence. Surrounded by panicking demonstrators, the three sought refuge in Mack’s Café. The police followed them into the café and assaulted them. When Jimmie Lee Jackson came to the aid of his mother and grandfather, he was shot twice in the abdomen by trooper James Fowler. He died eight days later in a Selma hospital.

In an impassioned eulogy, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. honored Jackson saying, “I will never forget as I stood by his bedside a few days ago…how radiantly he still responded, how he mentioned the freedom movement and how he talked about the faith he still had in his God…. We must be concerned not only about who murdered him, but also about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderer.”

This project was developed by The Bennett Group in association with the Alabama Council on Human Relations, Inc. The project was funded utilizing the housing tax credit provided by the Alabama Housing Finance Authority; equity provided by CAHEC; construction and permanent financing provided by United Bank.