Orville L. Hubbard - Hubbard's Legacy

Hubbard's Legacy

Hubbard remains a controversial figure in Michigan politics many years after his death. In his book "Detroit Divided", University of Michigan researcher Reynolds Farley found that African-Americans in Metro Detroit still view Dearborn as harboring racial hostility, more than 30 years after Hubbard left office. Dearborn's African-American population is up from fewer than 100 in 1980 to more than 1,200 in 2000. Still, that represents less than 1.3 percent of the population in a city that borders the predominantly African-American City of Detroit. Dearborn is not by any means unusual in that respect, however, as such stark racial differences between Detroit and its suburbs are typical. For example, in Livonia, Michigan, another West-side suburb of Detroit, less than 1% of the population is African-American.