Orville Hubbard

In the 1941 mayoral election, Orville L. Hubbard defeated Clarence Doyle to become Dearborn’s third mayor. Hubbard was elected as a political outsider candidate in the wake of corruption indictments issued against senior members of the police and a city councilmen earlier in 1941.

Orville Hubbard (1903-82) was mayor of Dearborn for 15 consecutive terms, from 1942-78, one of the longest tenures of any full-time U.S. mayor. Born near Union City, Michigan, Hubbard served in the Marine Corps from 1922-25 and graduated from the Detroit College of Law. Settling in Dearborn, he ran unsuccessfully for public office nine times before becoming mayor.

This promotional image of Hubbard was reused many times since his first mayoral election win.

Campaign material from the office of Orville Hubbard, including a bicentennial coin on the far right.

Sometimes labeled a political “boss,” Hubbard was a colorful, controversial figure who won re-election by landslide margins despite a libel judgment, a recall attempt, a grand jury investigation, a governor’s removal hearing, and federal civil rights conspiracy trial. A self-acknowledged segregationist, he periodically gained negative national attention for comments that disparaged African-Americans.

Despite his unflagging popularity within Dearborn, it was Hubbard’s persistent record of race-baiting that established his enduring reputation outside the city. To kill a low-income housing proposal in 1948, Hubbard had cards distributed to voters urging, “KEEP NEGROES OUT OF DEARBORN,” and his long-running campaign slogan, “Keep Dearborn Clean,” was widely understood to mean “Keep Dearborn White.” He first branded himself nationally as a segregationist in 1956, only a few months after Rosa Parks effectively launched the civil rights era by refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Asked for his response, he told the Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser he was “for complete segregation, one million percent on all levels.” In 1965, two years after a racially motivated mob had vandalized a Dearborn home, Hubbard was tried in federal court on civil rights conspiracy charges. When he and two other officials were acquitted, he took the jury out for dinner. Almost simultaneously, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission failed to stop Hubbard from posting racially oriented articles on city bulletin boards. Two years later, during the 1967 Detroit rebellion, he yet again confirmed his reputation as a racist when he ordered police to shoot looters and arsonists on sight.

Violating a libel suit judgement that restricted him to Wayne County, Orville Hubbard and two department heads dressed as clowns when departing Detroit for the Republican National Convention.

Sometimes vilified as a dictator – along the lines of Hitler and Mussolini – Hubbard was also criticized for trying to run Dearborn in the mold of big-city political bosses. His domineering style of leadership led a group of citizens to try unsuccessfully to recall him from office in 1951. In the late 1940s and early ’50s Hubbard was enmeshed in a series of widely publicized incidents. After losing a libel case to attorney John Fish, the mayor was ordered to pay a $7,500 judgment – $1,000 more than his salary. Defying the court, Hubbard eluded process servers and sheriff’s deputies for months, once setting up a tongue-in-cheek “government in exile” in Windsor, Ontario. At another juncture the 350-pound Hubbard joined two overweight department heads in boarding a train bound for Chicago while all three wore identical clown masks. Although his nonstop publicity stunts made him the most famous suburban mayor in America, attracting coverage in Time, Life and the New York Times Magazine, this strategy was often simply dismissed as buffoonery. On a more serious note, Hubbard emerged unscathed from a 1953 grand jury investigation and a 1954 governor’s removal hearing based partly on allegations that he had improperly accepted a television set from a company that received a property tax cut.

Some of Hubbard’s campaign promotional items. In its collections, the Museum has dozens of thimbles and bars of Hubbard soap with his oft repeated slogan “Keep Dearborn Clean.”

Largely because of disproportionately high property taxes levied against Ford Motor Co. and other businesses, he was able to keep homeowners’ taxes low and still provide what he called “the world’s best public service” while creating Dearborn’s signature facilities-well maintained parks and pools, Camp Dearborn, the Henry Ford Centennial Library, and housing for seniors in Dearborn as well as in a Florida Apartment building. During his tenure as mayor, Dearborn continued to grow in residential, industrial, and retail areas.