I Remember Dr. Morris Dunbar – Professor of Biology on MLK Day
“For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”
~ Matthew 17:20-21
“Helping one person might not change the world, but it could change the world for one person.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King
Prologue—Coming of Age During the Chaos of the Detroit Riots of 1967
It was year 1968, less than a year after the infamous Detroit Riot of 1967. My family had been living on the lower Eastside of Detroit, in the East Village Neighborhood @2655 Montclair near the corner of Charlevoix in what people today would call, “The Hood”. Incidentally we lived about 4-5 blocks from one the most famous houses in Detroit, Dr. Ossian Sweet @2905 Garland St. where “in 1925 a white mob of about 1,000 gathered in protest of the Sweet family moving into the formerly all-white neighborhood”.
The Ossian H. Sweet House is a privately owned house located at 2905 Garland Street in Detroit, Michigan. The house was designed by Maurice Herman Finkel, and in 1925 it was bought by its second owner, physician Ossian Sweet, an African American. Soon after he moved in, the house was the site of a confrontation when a white mob of about 1,000 gathered in protest of the Sweet family moving into the formerly all-white neighborhood. Rocks thrown by the mob broke windows, and someone in the house fired out at the mob, killing one man and wounding another. Sweet and ten other persons from the house were arrested for murder.
Contacted by the NAACP, nationally known attorney Clarence Darrow joined their defense team. After a mistrial, in the second trial the first defendant was acquitted. The prosecution dropped charges against the remaining defendants. The case was considered important as part of the civil rights movement and establishing freedom of residence. The house was designated as a Michigan State Historic Site in 1975[2] and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.[1]
This act of racial terrorism led to the birth of my nativity 40 years later after the Ossian Sweet case back in the early 1960s East Village section of Detroit. In the early 1960s, East Village was an ethnically mixed neighborhood consisting of Blacks, Jews and Whites (mostly recent immigrants) from Eastern European countries like – Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, Ukraine, etc… Everyone got along with each other, but living in the ghetto had its constant challenges—VIOLENCE was always right around the next corner and could find you unawares if one wasn’t vigilant.
All of that idyllic existence in the ghetto came to a crashing end when in late July 1967, there was an incident at a bar called, “The Blind Pig” between some of the Black customers and the White police officers which as the story goes, quickly got out of control, spilled into the streets and within a few hours this innocuous bar room brawl had fomented into a full-blown riot that engulfed the entire city of Detroit. Here is a summary of the tragic events of the Detroit Riot of 1967 that shaped my life, Dr. Delbert Davis life, and the lives of several generations of Detroiters who were impacted by that series of unfortunate events—
The 1967 Detroit Riot, also known as the 12th Street Riot or Detroit Rebellion, was the bloodiest of the urban riots in the United States during the “Long, hot summer of 1967“.[3] Composed mainly of confrontations between black residents and the Detroit Police Department, it began in the early morning hours of Sunday July 23, 1967, in Detroit, Michigan.
The precipitating event was a police raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar, known as a blind pig, on the city’s Near West Side. It exploded into one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in American history, lasting five days and surpassing the scale of Detroit’s 1943 race riot 24 years earlier.
Governor George W. Romney ordered the Michigan Army National Guard into Detroit to help end the disturbance. President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in the United States Army‘s 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions. The riot resulted in 43 deaths, 1,189 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 400 buildings destroyed.
The scale of the riot was the worst in the United States since the 1863 New York City draft riots during the American Civil War, and it was not surpassed until the 1992 Los Angeles riots 25 years later.
Since I was only 5 years old at the time of the Detroit riot (incidentally Detroit ends with the word “riot”), the only thing I remember was my mother telling me to stay in the house and stay away from the windows which, as a curious child, I couldn’t resist and remember peeking out the living room window to see people carrying TVs, chairs, sofas, food, anything you could think of –things that they had stolen from the local stores in our neighborhood. Eventually my mother saw that my curiosity about the riot would not be assuaged, and, taking the initiative, brought me on a field trip alongside a few other mothers from the neighborhood to our local high school called Southeastern. For years, my mother had a picture of me at that school standing off to the side, hanging on to the fence in the background while my mother and the other ladies of the neighborhood spoke to the young soldiers guiding Southeastern high school with their assault rifles in hand. If I ever find that iconic picture, I promise to post it here below—
*N.B.: Southeastern High School, East Village neighborhood (Detroit, Michigan)
The Detroit Riot of 1967 and the Sociological Phenomena of ‘White Flight’
There was a silver lining for many lower-middleclass Blacks in Detroit in the late 1960s, this Detroit riot (and many other so-called “Race” riots occurring at this time in many big cities across America during the Civil Rights Movement especially in the 1960s) had precipitated a social phenomenon among affected White people who were then living in these big metropolitan areas sociologists called “White Flight or White Exodus” which according to The Handbook of Juvenile Crime and Juvenile and Juvenile Justice defines as – “. . . the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of White people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse.” I would add that historically, sociologically, and politically White Flight has been inseparably attached to race riots serving as a flash point or point of no return for Whites worrying about their safety by remaining in the Hood or inside ghettos vs. fleeing to mythical safer lands. The motivation of White Flight is not so much racism (because they have been living in Black communities sometimes for generations prior to the breach), but issues of safety, security, and quality of Life which are reflected in the contrasting memes below—
Dr. Morris Dunbar gave me an invitation to Upper Middle-Class Values and Intellectualism by teaching me to become a Bibliophile (a lover of reading books)
I am a big believer in giving people their flowers while they are alive. I have been thinking of Professor Morris Dunbar, a neighbor who befriended me 50+ years ago in our Detroit neighborhood. The following essay is therefore a brief narrative of how someone can plant the smallest of seeds, but reap the largest of harvest if the seed is planted in the right soil. Those few and tiny seeds of kindness, hospitality, friendliness, mentoring, family and fatherliness were just a couple of episodes that I can remember beginning in 1968 about 55 years ago when I was about age 7.
Those tiny, little seeds that Dr. Morris Dunbar planted in my young Soul back then helped to make me the man I am today. It reminds me of the scripture in Luke 13:19—when Jesus, teaching is disciples about Faith, told them, “It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it.” However, these tiny seeds would need many years of struggle, toil, frustration, failure and eventually triumph to reach the fruit of his labor that Dr. Dunbar had unwittingly invested in me. This struggle to transcend the lowly estate of our birth reminds me on a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King regarding the apotheosis of Change—
Message of Gratitude for Professor Morris Dunbar sent to Morris Dunbar Jr. on MLK Day
On MLK Day Giving Gratitude to a neighbor who invited me into his family life 55 years ago and taught me upper middle-class values and how to become an Intellectual. . . PROFESSOR MORRIS DUNBAR
I am very happy reconnecting with the Dunbar Family after many decades.
*Dr. Morris Dunbar, Professor of Biology at Wayne County Community College District (Detroit, Michigan)
Please give your father, Professor Morris Dunbar my warmest regards. Tell him that I really appreciated him being a father figure to me back in the day 55 years ago—taking us swimming at the YMCA, playing ping pong, and shooting pool in your basement, but most importantly letting me read some of the hundreds and hundreds of books you had in your family library at your home on Parkside Road in the Sherwood Forest of Northwest Detroit which did 3 things that changed my life forever:
(1) Reading those books put me on the road to loving and venerating the written word, becoming an Intellectual and eventually writing scholarly articles, essays and books myself, For example, I recently made a post on Facebook celebrating 40 years of publishing essays, articles, books, and scholarly law review articles on 5 continents – works that have been translated into over two dozen languages;
40th ANNIVERSARY of my 1st Published Essays (Jan. & Feb. 1983) written during my Senior Year in College DePauw University, titled — “Music: You Are What You Listen To” & “Students Should Maintain Beliefs” Please give the Truth to our Youth.
* BIRTH OF A CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUAL, Part I https://www.renewamerica.com/columns/washington/130207
* BIRTH OF A CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUAL, Part II
https://www.renewamerica.com/columns/washington/130209
One day (I believe it was in 2007) I remember parking in front of your house with some manuscripts of my 4th or 5th book that I wanted to share with Professor Dunbar. Since it was late and I didn’t want to disturb your family, I just dropped off the folder with the manuscripts and on the spot decided to write a poem of Gratitude dedicated to Professor Dunbar and his family. Although that poem is lost to me (perhaps you still have it?), below is a poem I wrote that night for another person who was very dear to me who died shortly after I wrote her poem – the church mother of my church I was attending then—Mother Julia Mae McCarty Green of Antioch Church of God in Christ. The poem was titled, “I Remember”—
Poem—“I Remember” (2007)
by Ellis Washington{To Pastor Havious Green}
I Remember … 30 years ago, you were a father to me when I had no father;
You taught me how to pray, how to give thanks to God, How to study the Bible;I Remember …Your wife, Mother Julia Green, teaching me how to type, how to write,
how to write books … to be Profound …I Remember …Your 8 daughters embracing me, making music with me … being the Brother they never had …
I Remember Antioch Church of God in Christ…
I Remember the Love…I Remember … I Remember!
(2) Visiting that beautiful Tudor home, you all lived in @19421 Parkside Rd. in the
Sherwood Forest neighborhood of N.W. Detroit motivated and inspired me to study architecture and aspire to live in a grand home like Professor Dunbar had one day.
And through practicing your principles of hard work and efficiency, I was honored to live for several years in a nice Tudor home in Grosse Pointe Park @1428 Yorkshire Rd. where my second child, Eden was born –
(3) Professor Dunbar inspired me to one day become a professor like you which for 23 years I have been a Professor of Law, History, Politics and Philosophy. THANK YOU PROFESSOR MORRIS DUNBAR FOR BEING A BLESSING IN MY LIFE. Happy Martin Luther King Day!!
Epilogue—Dental Surgeon, Delbert A. Davis, a Protegee of Dr. Morris Dunbar
Professor Morris Dunbar has influenced many generations of students to achieve their vocational goals in life. One of his most notable student is Delbert A. Davis, a dentist practicing in Chesterfield, Michigan, who in an article on the Wayne County Community College website stated the following—
Davis’ conversation leads one to believe that he could easily choose a political career as well as dentistry. Growing up in Detroit, he remembers after Roman Gibbs was mayor and Coleman A. Young was elected. Both men, along with others, tried to create better conditions for Detroiters. Recalling times after the ‘60s and during the riots, Davis remembers being told to stay under the bed. After that, everyone was afraid. Although he didn’t know what was going on, he remembers hiding. Davis thinks we are bordering on the same things now – not black/white issues but have and have-nots. “We need leadership to recognize the problems and where the people fit into those problems; it is just a matter time,” he said.
After completing an associate of science at WCCCD in 1983 in the Dental Hygiene Program, Davis continued his education at Morehouse College in Atlanta. He credits Dr. Morris Dunbar, WCCCD biology professor, for guiding him to Morehouse. Davis earned a dental medicine doctorate from Temple University School of Dentistry in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1992. Working with his patients, Davis emphasizes the importance of leading healthy lifestyles, making responsible choices, and keeping life in perspective.
*N.B.: Dr. DELBERT A. DAVIS – GRAND OPENING – CHESTERFIELD, Mich. May 24, 2022 – The new Affordable Dentures & Implants practice in Chesterfield, Michigan, located at 50664 Waterside Drive is now open. The practice joins the nation’s largest provider network of dental practices – supported by Affordable Care – that focus exclusively on tooth replacement services.
Although I no longer believe in “coincidence” but in God’s divine providence, it was interesting to hear how both Dr. Delbert Davis and I both mentioned how Professor Morris Dunbar impacted us with his intellectual worldview of life, but how we were both children whose childhood was cruelly taken from us due to the Detroit Riot of 1967, nevertheless even great trauma like the chaos of a riot which resulted in 43 deaths, 1,189 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 400 buildings destroyed. And the psychic injuries over the generations affecting millions of other Black Detroiters placed this once great city on a path to perdition for over 50 years, yet the city that used to be called in the early 1900s “The Paris of the Midwest” and “the City of Trees was during World War II was called “The Arsenal of Democracy”, thus I and many others believe that Detroit will like the Phoenix of Legend, rise from the ashes to become a great shining city on a hill.
Epilogue II—Thank You Dr. Morris Dunbar for Mentoring an 8-year-old little Boy Unawares
Helping someone unawares is like throwing a tiny pebble in the middle of a pond which was still and pure as glass, yet once that tiny pebble disrupted the pond all you see for the next few minutes are ripples, and ripples and ripples of concentric circles undulating into infinity from the point where that first pebble made impact with the surface of the water. That. . . ! is my own inferior description about the positive impact Professor Morris Dunbar had in my life about 55 years ago.
To this day I’m not certain if he or his dearly departed wife, who was also a doctor in the medical field, nor his three children—Michelle, Morris Jr. and Stevie knew how much those few unannounced visits—when they graciously invited me into their family life—meant to my intellectual and psychological development. But, I hope that reading the essay above will give Professor Dunbar, his family and all who read this essay an inkling that no good deed, no matter how small, will ever be in vain. Following in Professor Dunbar’s intellectual legacy, I offer every reader to take my critical thinking blog, EllisWashingtonReport.com which I created 13 years ago in 2010 and please share the TRUTH with our YOUTH.
Category: Commentary
