Controversial Hubbard Statue Removed, Prepared for New Home

The statue of a former Dearborn mayor known for his segregationist views and racially charged remarks — as well as charting the city’s course to prosperity — was taken down from the old city hall property Tuesday morning and prepared for its new home at the Dearborn Historical Museum.

Moving the towering, 10-foot bronze statue of Orville Hubbard, the longest-serving mayor in Dearborn’s history, was necessary because the old city hall property at Michigan and Schaefer was sold for private development, the Detroit Free Press reports.

The statue wasn’t moved to the new Dearborn Administrative Center which opened earlier this year at 16901 Michigan Ave., and the decision to move it to the museum at 915 Brady St. wasn’t made until the last month or so.

The statue of the waving Hubbard will be the only one at the museum, and will face the street, where it will be seen by the estimated 4,000 to 5,000 visitors to the museum each year. The museum wants to increase its visibility, and having the Hubbard statue in front of the property is expected to help meet that goal.

“Orville Hubbard is a big part of our history,” Jack Tate, the museum’s acting curator, told The Detroit News.

He certainly was.

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Hubbard served as mayor for 36 years from 1942-1978, during the post World War II era when Dearborn, home of Ford Motor Co., was considered Detroit’s most important suburbs.

Among many, Hubbard is regarded as a pioneer who delivered a wide range of services to residents. But to others, the smiling, waving statue is as racially charged as the Confederate flag, under renewed scrutiny as a racist symbol in the months since an allegedly racist white gunman killed nine African-Americans during a prayer meeting in a historic Charleston, SC, church.

This past summer, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee of Michigan called on the Dearborn City Council to remove the statue of Hubbard, an unapologetic segregationist who once told The New York Times that integration opens the door for a “mongrel race” and would bring about “the end of civilization.”

Related

• Group Seeks Removal of ‘Relic of Racism,’ Former Mayor’s Statue
• City: Controversial Hubbard Statue Must Move, But Where?

The civil rights group called the statue “a symbol of decades of racial segregation that brutally divided the men and women of both the Dearborn and Detroit communities” and said Hubbard used his “power to fuel racial antagonisms, preach white supremacy and maintain the color line at the Dearborn-Detroit border.”

In a statement to Patch at the time, Dearborn Public Information Director Mary Laundroche said officials “don’t want the statue, installed in 1989 in honor of man who was last mayor 40 years ago, to become a distraction from the positive stories of our community today.”

“Some people who cannot engage directly in the issue that has arisen in South Carolina want to be relevant by initiating similar discussions closer to home,” the statement read. “It is not wrong to raise the issue but it should be reviewed on its own and not treated as part of a very different situation.”

There was no mention of Hubbard’s racist views on signage at the old location, but his segregationist views will be reflected in signage at the museum installation, Tate said.

Fatina Abdrabboh, director of the Michigan regional office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, cheered the move of the statue from its prominent location on Michigan Avenue.

Hubbard’s daughter, Nancy Hubbard, a longtime former member of the Dearborn City Council, said she feared the statue of her father would have been vandalized if it had been left at the old location, as a longtime Hubbard aide, Maureen Keane-Doran thought it should.

Keane-Doran told The Detroit News she was “heartbroken” that the vestige was being moved and said “it wouldn’t have hurt anybody” in its old location.

Nancy Hubbard said her father was a dedicated public servant to Dearborn. Though some interpreted his oft-repeated pledge to “keep Dearborn clean” as a segregationist anthem, what he wanted was a physically clean, well-kept town, his daughter said.

“The people wanted it lily-white, and that’s the way he kept it,” Nancy Hubbard said. “The streets were always clean, always swept on time. You never saw overgrown grass anywhere. He had a crew that checked on debris. ... It was a clean city, that’s for sure.”

Her father wouldn’t recognize the city he helped develop today, Nancy Hubbard said.

“If he saw what was going on now, he’s liable to have a heart attack,” she told the Free Press. “It’s not the Dearborn I grew up in. It’s just changed completely. I don’t even recognize it when I drive around Michigan Avenue.”

» Photo via Wikimedia/Creative Commons