Key Piece of African-American History on Auction Block

Detroit historian Kevin Boyle says the Dunbar Hospital is “a physical reminder of the power of segregation and how African-Americans built communities in defiance of that segregation.” (Photo: Detroit Medical Society Facebook page)

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If the walls the historic Dunbar Hospital, up for grabs in a Wayne County tax sale, could talk, they would tell stories passed down to the poet son of a slave for whom the hospital was named, and of the struggles of equality for African-American who converted it to a hospital in 1919.

The historic building, built at 580 Frederick St. in 1892 as a residence for jeweler Charles W. Warren, is on the auction block over a $1,700 water bill the current owners claim they never received, The Detroit News reports.

The Detroit Medical Society, a group of African-American doctors acquired the building for $3,000 in 1978 and has completed more than $400,000 in renovations under a plan to convert the Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne-style mansion as a museum. The building gained National Register of Historic Places status in 1979 and is also listed on Michigan’s state historic registry.

“It was a really important institution in black Detroit,” historian Kevin Boyle told The Detroit News. “Today, it’s a physical reminder of the power of segregation and how African-Americans built communities in defiance of that segregation.”

He researched the history of the brick Romanesque mansion, which opened as a hospital in 1919, for his award-winning book, “Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age,” described as an “epic tale of one man (Dr. Ossian Sweet) trapped by the battles of his era’s changing times.”

The Dunbar Hospital figures prominently in the story. The real-life protagonist, Dr. Ossian Sweet, performed surgery at the Frederick Street hospital,opened by black physicians in 1919 just as the surrounding Brush Park neighborhood was becoming integrated with the African-American elite.

Minority owned health-care facilities filled a critical need at the time because blacks were often turned away from hospitals, reports Detroiturbex.com. The physicians needed a larger facility by 1928, when the building at 580 Frederick was acquired by the Charles Diggs Sr., who converted it to the House of Diggs funeral home. Diggs went on to become Michigan’s first African-American Democratic state senator.

The Detroit Medical Society purchased the building from Diggs in 1978 and operated it as a museum until three years ago, when a broken water line forced members to abandon the property.

Since then, it has been targeted by vandals who have broken now boarded-over windows and taken apart a wrought-iron fence surrounding the property “rung by rung,” Southfield internist Dr. Aaron Maddox, the Detroit Medical Society’s president, said.

The Medical Society desperately wants to reclaim the property and continue to operate it as an homage to physicians who fought color barriers.

“There is a real shock value to all of this,” Dr. Lonnie Joe Jr., a medical society member, told The Detroit News. “We didn’t know anything about foreclosure, or the auction, until the other day.”

His group attempted to settle the debt with a certified check earlier this week, but David Szymanski, chief deputy treasurer, said it’s too late to stop the auction.

“I understand how upset they must be,” he sympathized. “We were working with people up to August (the deadline is April 1) but our attitude is that we have to be fair to the people who are trying to buy these properties.

“It’s sad to see (it in such condition) because it’s such a rich part of African-American heritage, and all of our heritage, as Detroiters.”

Bidding, which started at $3,800, had reached $12,000 by Tuesday. Bidding continues through Sept. 24, according to the treasurer’s web site.