Few institutions better illustrate the effects of the Great Migration on Black life in Detroit than Dunbar Memorial Hospital.
Founded in 1918, Dunbar was both a medical institution and a radical expression of racial uplift and Black health advocacy.
We study and teach Black medical history and are members of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.
Dunbar provided more than curative medicine. It also offered preventive care, professional training and organized advocacy. It was led largely by members of W. E. B. Du Bois’ “Talented Tenth,” a cadre of educated and socially conscious Black Americans who advocated for marginalized Black Americans.
Their efforts provide lessons for advancing health equity today.
Beacon of opportunity
Between 1910 and 1930, Detroit experienced one of the most dramatic demographic transformations in American history. This shift was driven largely by Henry Ford’s 1914 offer of five dollars a day, roughly twice the typical wage at the time, to anyone willing to work on his assembly lines.
Detroit’s Black population rose from fewer than 6,000 residents in 1910 to more than 120,000 by 1930. This more than sixfold increase was part of the Great Migration, the mass movement of millions of African Americans from the rural South to Northern and Midwestern cities in search of industrial jobs, political freedom and escape from Jim Crow segregation.
By mid-century, 300,000 Black Americans migrated to Detroit, making it one of the largest urban Black communities in the North. Rapid population growth created an urgent need for housing, employment and health care.
Structural racism threatens Black health and lives
At the time, white residents could live in any neighborhood they could afford. Black Detroiters were systematically excluded from quality neighborhoods by restrictive covenants embedded in property deeds. And they were barred from white-controlled medical institutions.
Historian Richard W. Thomas explains in “Life for Us is What We Make It” how real estate steering and redlining confined Black Detroiters to overcrowded districts such as Black Bottom and Paradise Valley. Inflated rents, poor sanitation and neglected infrastructure defined daily life. These conditions fostered infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, influenza, smallpox and dysentery. The causes were structural rather than behavioral.
Racial discrimination extended into medical systems. Many white hospitals refused Black patients. When provided care, Black patients were assigned to inferior wards. Black physicians and nurses were barred from internships, residencies and professional advancement.
Black and white leadership in Detroit recognized the need for an intervention. The Black community experienced disparities in treatment and health outcomes. White residents feared disease would seep into their neighborhoods.
As Detroit’s Black population expanded, the gap between community health needs widened. In 1918, Black physicians founded Dunbar Hospital to address health care disparities.
The birthplace of a Black hospital movement
Dunbar Memorial Hospital was founded by 30 Black doctors and allied health professionals. It was named for poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose cultural influence resonated deeply in Black Detroit.
Dunbar was designed to serve Black patients with dignity and competence. It provided inpatient and outpatient care, hygiene education and disease prevention. The hospital occupied a three-story Romanesque Revival–Queen Anne residence built in 1892 at 580 Frederick St. in midtown Detroit.
Acquired in 1917, the house was converted into a 25-bed hospital with operating rooms, laboratory services, pharmacy and a nursing training program. Evidence suggests the Black engineer Cornelius Langston Henderson designed the renovation. In 1924, the Allied Medical Society acquired the adjacent house at 584 Frederick St. for its nurses quarters and offices.
Dunbar trained Black physicians and nurses excluded from white institutions. It helped to build a medical network for Black health care professionals.
The rise of Black-led medical societies
In the early 20th century in Detroit, Black physicians perceived medicine as both profession and racial service. Many were trained at Howard University College of Medicine and Meharry Medical College. After graduation, white hospitals denied them privileges based solely on race. They could not admit patients freely or perform surgeries under equal conditions.
Excluded from white medical societies, Blacks physicians organized parallel institutions. The National Medical Association and the Allied Medical Society of Wayne County are examples of their organizing. Their goal was to secure professional autonomy and improve community access to health care.
“The Negro Hospital Movement was a reflection of the reality that medicine was one of the most segregated professions in America,” said Dr. Charles H. Wright, a Black medical doctor in Detroit and founder of The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.
Dunbar’s founders included Drs. James W. Ames, Albert Henry Johnson, George Bundy, Albert Buford Cleage Sr. and Alexander L. Turner. Beyond clinical work, these Black physicians pursued public health advocacy. They organized sanitation campaigns to address childhood illnesses, nutrition and recreation.
Civil rights reforms integrated hospitals
Detroit had approximately 18 Black-owned or Black-operated hospitals during the 1940s and ’1950s.
Their decline followed structural and policy shifts. Hospital desegregation after World War II opened previously white-only hospitals to Black physicians and patients.
Federal policy reinforced this change. When Medicare began in 1965, hospitals had to comply with civil rights laws to receive funding.
Integration marked progress. It reduced the structural need for separate Black institutions. Jamon Jordan, Detroit’s official historian, noted how federal policy accelerated desegregation.
The history of Dunbar Memorial Hospital offers a blueprint for addressing health inequities today. It reflects W.E.B. Du Bois’ Talented 10th not as elitism but as obligation. During the Jim Crow era, Black physicians responded to exclusion with organization. The lesson is clear. Representation alone is not enough. Advancing health equity requires professional excellence, accountability and institution building.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Rashid Faisal, University of Michigan-Dearborn and Anita Moncrease, Wayne State University
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I am a member of the Detroit Medical Society which has owned the Dunbar Memorial Hospital building since 1979 when it became a National Historical Site and a Museum. The building has been closed for two decades since 2004 .
Rashid Faisal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
