Richie Jean maintained a lifelong practice of making homemade biscuits for breakfast — a tradition she only broke on the morning of one of the Selma marches, when there were simply too many people in the house. Prepared breakfast rolls would have to do.

Even years after visiting, many people remembered how delicious Richie Jean’s cooking was. Both Ralph Abernathy and Jimmy Coe would fondly recall Richie Jean’s smothered cabbage. Coe was such a fan that when he and his wife had lunch with the Jacksons years later, Mrs. Coe asked Richie Jean for the recipe — her husband hadn’t been able to stop talking about it, even after all that time.

Dr. King stayed so frequently at the Jackson home that they kept this pair of pajamas (originally Sullivan’s) specifically for him. King was at ease in the home, and he would hold meetings with his lieutenants in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference there — sometimes while still wearing the pajamas.

As work was being done to prepare for the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, the Jackson home was full of guests. At the most crowded times, people were sleeping in beds, on couches, on the floor, upright in chairs, and even in bathtubs. John Bevel, who worked on Dr. King’s staff, stayed in the middle bathroom so often that he knew exactly where to get his bedding without having to ask.  

After the first night of what would be the successful Selma to Montgomery march, Dr. King returned to the Jackson home, where he soaked his feet in a tub at the kitchen table. When Ralph Abernathy came in, Richie Jean realized that she didn’t have another foot tub. Instead, she pulled out a turkey roasting pan. King joked that it was because of Abernathy’s big feet — the humor lifting the mood of everyone in the house.

The name “The House by the Side of the Road” came from Richie Jean’s favorite poem, by Sam Walter Foss. It reads in part: “I see from my house by the side of the road, by the side of the highway of life, the men who press with the ardor of hope, the men who are faint with the strife. But I turn not away from their smiles and tears, both parts of an infinite plan—Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man.”