INKSTER, Mich. – All this week, students from Wayne State University have been working to uncover history at a home that once belonged to Malcolm X.
The archaeological dig is looking to give new insight into the home and the surrounding neighborhood.
Very few places that the civil rights leader resided in are still standing today, but thanks to members of an Inkster neighborhood, X’s house in the early 1950s is still up.
It’s hard to believe that the house was once slated for demolition.
“For eight years, we fought with the city to get the house,” said Founder of Project We Hope, Dream, and Believe Aaron Sims.
Sims and his friend researched and learned that the house seen in the video player above was once the home to the civil rights leader.
“Let’s pull up his prison file and see what we can find,” Sims said. “And then I was like, ‘DeJuan, we’re going to own this house one day,’ and he was like, ‘let’s go.’”
So you can imagine Sim’s excitement to see Wayne State University Archeology and Anthropology professors and students digging for artifacts.
“We have no expectations,” said Wayne State University Professor and Project Manager Tareq Ramadan. “We’re hoping to find something maybe linked to the family or to Malcolm himself.”
“So when they first came out on Monday, I was like, ‘man, like, this is like something you just see on tv like I started thinking about like Jurassic Park or something like that.’”
The home belonged to X’s brother Wilford Little and X lived there during a pivotal time of his life.
“Because when he came here, he was Malcolm Little,” Sims said. “And he made his transition from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X at his house.”
So far, they’ve found things like a stroller, picture frames, and even an old Faygo can that will eventually fill the home once it is restored and turned into a museum.
“We hope to fill the house with both, you know, materials we collected from the actual dig, but also stuff that we’ve collected,” Ramadan said. “We have people who are donating period furniture and appliances from the 1950s to make the house look like it did when Malcolm would have lived here.”
Sims, a third-generation member of the Inkster community, is thrilled to know that he had a part in saving the home that will teach many generations about the history of X.
“Yeah, it’s exciting,” Sims said.
Once the home is restored, they plan to build a community center next door.