Statue of segregationist former Dearborn mayor taken down by his family

Dearborn — The statue of Orville Hubbard, Dearborn's longest-serving mayor, and a man whose outspoken segregationist policies put the city on the map as one particularly hostile to blacks, was removed Friday from the grounds of the Dearborn Historical Museum and is in the possession of his family — and may be en route to Union City, Hubbard's hometown.

"The statue had been a divisive symbol rather than a unifying one," Mary Laundroche, spokeswoman for Dearborn, said in a statement. "The fact that the Hubbard family was able to move it out of Dearborn now — something they had wanted to do since 2015, when the statue was removed from the former City Hall campus — is a positive development for our community. It will allow our message to be better heard that Dearborn is committed to being a welcoming place for people of goodwill from all backgrounds.The statue had been placed prominently for decades on Michigan Avenue, outside of the old Dearborn city hall building. It was pulled down in Sept. 2015, after the municipal building was sold, and was given a new home at the historical museum at 915 Brady.

That changed on Friday. The day prior, someone placed a Black Lives Matter shirt on Hubbard's statue, the Detroit Metro Times reported.



https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/2020/06/06/dearborn-positive-development-family-takes-orville-hubbard-statue/3162936001/