DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) - Elected officials in a Detroit suburb are trying to wipe away part of the community’s segregationist past by removing the name of its longest-serving mayor from a civic center ballroom.
The action Tuesday by the Dearborn City Council is the latest move to separate the city from Orville Hubbard’s political legacy, which included efforts to keep Black families from moving into the then-mostly white community.
Hubbard, who was white, was mayor from 1942 to 1977. He died in 1982.
“Dearborn is proactively looking to demonstrate inclusivity and a welcoming approach to everything we do, and that’s important to me,” Councilwoman Erin Byrnes said prior to Tuesday’s vote. “In that sense, any name that we choose to put in a place of honor or allow to stay in a place of honor needs to be inclusive and welcoming.”
The ballroom is located within Dearborn’s Ford Community and Performing Arts Center.
Wayne County Circuit Judge Susan Hubbard said her grandfather was committed and kind to people.
“It is therefore quite disheartening to read people describe him as nothing but a bigot - people who never knew him or weren’t even alive during his life,” she told the Detroit Free Press in a statement. “I was certainly dismayed to read some of the quotes attributed to him 60 years ago and I certainly disavow them. People of many races admired him for his acts of kindness and perhaps forgave him for his faults.”
Over the past few decades, Dearborn has become more racially diverse. About a third of the city’s residents are of Middle Eastern descent and about 4% are Black.
A statue of Hubbard was removed from outside City Hall in 2015 following pressure from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. The statue then was stored on the grounds of the Dearborn Historical Museum until last June when it was taken down and turned over to Hubbard’s family.
That removal came in the wake of national protests over racism and police brutality following George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody. Those demonstrations already had sparked a new wave of Confederate memorial removals
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