Dearborn: Built By Ford, Ruled By Hubbard Giving The People What They Want

Dearborn: Built by Ford, Ruled by Hubbard

Giving the People What They Want

By Henry Reske

Part II

Part II of Dearborn: Built by Ford, Ruled by Hubbard" looks at the times a Dearborn newspaper editor refused to buckle under to Hubbard pressure, when the Ford Motor Co. exerted pressure of its own on the erstwhile city dictator and the racism which has enveloped the city.

Fearing a cut off of the useful information Dearborn's city hall provides local newspapers, the papers in that city resist printing anything critical of the Hubbard administration.

If not for a state audit - prompted by charges of corruption leveled by Dearborn citizen Douglas Thomas - the Dearborn newspapers would never have written anything critical of Hubbard.

But even with Hubbard's control waning due to his ill health, Thomas leveling charges and state investigators swarming over city records, the local papers proceeded almost as usual.

The publisher of the Dearborn Times-Herald, Frank Bewick, ran a front page editorial proclaiming that his paper would not be a part of the vulture-like attack on the ailing Hubbard. His editorial closely followed the firing of Times-Herald editor Gary Farrugia, who had been critical of the Hubbard administration in articles he had written and edited.

Although both Bewick and city officials deny it, members of the local and downtown press generally agree that Bewick was coerced into firing Farrugia for his aggressive coverage of the Hubbard administration. City officials have even taken privately to joking about their part in the firing.

The massive power of the Hubbard administration would go unrivaled if not for the awesome Ford Motor Co. Ford is definitely a power to be reckoned with.Its industry and holdings pay about 50% of all Dearborn taxes and have provided a great deal of the money that Hubbard has used to provide the city with services that aid in his seemingly endless reelections.

When Ford talks, the city listens. Nearly a year ago the Dearborn Board of Education voted to assess the entire millage approved by voters. Some citizens were angered by the move because the board had earlier promised to return some of the millage if t wasn't needed. Preliminary figures showed the board would have an excess, but board members believed all the money would later be needed because of upcoming city employee contract talks, rising costs of fuel, impending Blue Cross and Blue Shield rate hikes, and the uncertainty of state aid. Assessing the entire millage, and not returning the one-mill excess, meant $900,000 in FoMoCo taxes.

Ford officials demanded-and got-a special meeting of the board to discuss the issue. Ford sent Robert Whan, Associate for Municipal and Community Affairs at Ford, and Ford's Supervisory Tax Attorney, Frank Stocking, to the meeting. Whan chided the board for its decision, which he termed "ll-timed due to poor economic conditions.

"We view as a totally unrealistic luxury any suggestion that this is an appropriate time for the school district to build up cash reserves at taxpayers' expense in order to ward off future uncertainties," Whan said. Meanwhile, the tax attorney presented the board with a complex 12-page document designed to prove that the board wouldn't need the additional money.

The City of Dearborn sent its acting chief administrator, Robert Keith Archer, to bolster the Ford arguments. The School Board eventually rescinded its vote and returned the mill.

About a year later all the predictions of rising costs proved out, and the board is now facing a $7.7 million deficit. The board has also recently voted to close schools and lay off more than 60 teachers. They maintain the school closings and lay-offs are necessary because of declining enrollments. Yet parents insist that both the schools and the teachers could be kept on with the additional funds.

The extent of the Ford-Hubbard mutual hand-washing is hard to assess. Yet the fact that Hubbard has existed so long in the town Henry Ford built seems to suggest more than just a platonic relationship.

Hubbard, however, must be given credit for opposing Ford Motor Co. on at least one occasion. Ford, in 1948, was backing a row housing complex in Dearborn, sponsored by the John Hancock Insurance Company, which Hubbard viewed as a threat to the racial makeup of Dearborn. Hubbard reasoned that the low-rent housing would soon attract blacks. So Hubbard put the issue to a city-wide advisory vote, with the voters deciding 15,948 to 10,562 against the project.

On another occasion when Hubbard and Dearborn residents asserted their racist tendencies, in 1963, a near-riot ensued in Dearborn when local residents thought a black family was rnoving into their lily-white city. Residents on Kendal, in Dearborn's east end, had spied blacks moving furniture into a house and became enraged. They took it for granted that blacks were invading the all-white neighborhood. In actuality, the blacks were employees of a moving company relocating a white family. Such facts eluded the angered mob, however, and when the owner of the house arrived to explain that the home was actually rented to whites, the crowd began throwing eggs and rocks.

Police Chief Garrison Clayton arrived with uniformed police officers to quell the disturbance, but he ordered the police to leave when he scoped out the nature of the incident. Hubbard, who was spending the day at Camp Dearborn, agreed with the action - or rather inaction - of the police.

The crowd vandalized the home and the owner's car, ripping its convertible top and pouring sugar into the gas tank. The disturbance finally ended when the homeowner's attorney arrived with the deed to the home proving it was not owned by blacks.

Federal charges were brought against Hubbard, the police chief and the director of public safety for the police inaction. Hubbard went into hiding for five days by flying to Boston and staying with friends. When he came out of hiding he was arrested and a trial ensued, with all defendants being judged not guilty.

A civil suit brought by the homeowner for physical and mental injuries against Hubbard and his cronies was settled out of court with Hubbard paying $4,500 in damages, a lot less than the $250,000 requested in the suit.

Other examples of Hubbard's racism include his directive that rioters during the 1967 Detroit rebellion would be shot on sight if they entered Dearborn and that, among other things, the riot resulted from liberal court decisions and Martin Luther King "raising hell."

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Hubbard knows what his people want and how to give t to them. Whether it was keeping the city lily-white or giving the people a retirement village in Florida, Hubbard has delivered.

Hubbard

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With such a track record on race relations, it's no wonder that Roy Wilkins, Executive Director of the NAACP, branded Hubbard in 1969 as "the meanest man in race relations" and more dedicated to segregation than Strom Thurmond, James Eastland and George Wallace. To this day Dearborn remains for the most part segregated. Only a handful of blacks live or rent homes in Dearborn, with an equally small number of black Ford executives renting apartments.

Of course the entire blame cannot be laid on Hubbard. Although Hubbard himself has set Dearborn's racist policies, none of them would have been possible without the support of Dearborn's citizens. If the people of Dearborn did not agree with Hubbard's racist practices, they could have removed him from office any number of times. They have not.

Perhaps better than any politician, Orville Hubbard knows what his people want and how to give it to them. Whether it was keeping the city lily-white or giving the people a retirement village in Florida, Hubbard has delivered.

Hubbard's longstanding policies will undoubtedly be continued in one form or another after he finally steps down or dies. The most probable candidates for mayor range from all seven members of the city council to the chief of police, all of whom owe their positions in one way or another to Orville L. Hubbard.

Regardless, Hubbard will not be forgotten. There are many people in Dearborn who, when they think of the mayor, think automatically of Hubbard. He has been mayor as long as they can remember.