They’re trying to make Steve Jobs’ childhood home a monument. Why him? Just because he’s rich and famous? Yes, he achieved a lot, but so did Selma. As she grew up she read whatever she could lay eyes on, experienced and dealt with discrimination, dreamed up businesses she would one day run, began writing at an early age and submitting letters to her school principal and the editor of the local newspaper pointing out injustices she saw. She and her mom planted a garden full of vegetables and flowers and set up habitat for critters visiting their yard–then she taught her friends how to do it, getting them involved and enthusiastic about gardening and looking out for bad things happening to the land around them.
In other words, while she was growing up, she was becoming a socially conscious person, even active in promoting social justice in small ways; she was also a budding entrepreneur, environmentalist, and teacher.
Today she, like Steve Jobs, uses what she learned and the skills she developed as a child in that home. Today she’s just a mother, teacher, spokesperson for the environment, advocate for social justice. Her house isn’t important enough to preserve as historically important, because she’s nobody famous. Just a world-changer in her own right.