At a time when Black people faced legalized discrimination and inequities in healthcare systems across the nation, Dr. Lula Belle Stewart-Robinson treated Black children in her home on Detroit’s west side.
Now, the home of the first Black female pediatric cardiologist in Michigan is a step closer to becoming an official historic landmark.
The Detroit City Council unanimously voted Tuesday to grant the designation to the two-family flat in the Petoskey-Otsego neighborhood where Stewart-Robinson’s private medical practice operated in the 1950s-60s.
Stewart-Robinson’s youngest son, Michael Robinson, 66, lives in the Dexter Avenue home and remembers the traffic that flowed through.
“All of the neighborhood children came to get their back-to-school immunization and booster shots and whatever else they needed,” Robinson said of the family home in the Dexter Boulevard subdivision, which runs east from Quincy Street to Linwood Boulevard. “Our home felt like Grand Central Station.”
Among the children Stewart-Robinson treated was music icon Aretha Franklin. In 1955, the doctor delivered the then-12-year-old Franklin’s first child, Clarence Franklin.
“Money was never an obstacle for these families; my mother never turned away any child whose parents couldn’t pay,” Michael Robinson said. “If the child was sick, my mother would care for them, and that was the end of it.”
Stewart Robinson’s humanitarian approach to medical care stemmed from her desire to provide equitable healthcare to Black people, a desire she developed as a child growing up in the Jim Crow South.
From here, the designation must pass the desk of Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. The Historic Designation Advisory Board’s Lead Architectural Historian, Rebecca Savage, told BridgeDetroit that similar proposals are almost always signed off on by the mayor.
For Jamon Jordan, the city of Detroit’s official historian, the decision was a no-brainer.
“Healthcare was one of the major battlefronts of civil rights and Black progress,” he said. “People think about public accommodation – buses, lunch counters, water fountains, bathrooms – but the fight for equality in healthcare has been a very long fight that people don’t talk about enough. Dr. Lula Belle Stewart-Robinson’s house is a site where that battle was going on.”
Life and career
Stewart-Robinson was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1920. In 1941, she graduated Cum Laude from Alcon College, now Alcon State University. She applied to Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., to fulfill her dream of becoming a doctor, despite the inequities Black doctors faced during that time.
In the Jim Crow South, Black doctors were not allowed to treat white patients and they were excluded from segregated hospitals and had to work out of inferior facilities.
Consequently, Black doctors even struggled to attract Black patients, and many of the patients that did come to them were those who couldn’t afford to pay. But these were the exact patients Stewart-Robinson wanted to serve.
In an essay as part of her medical school application, she wrote: “I will do my uttermost to finish medical school to better serve my race… I feel that medicine, when sincerely practiced, is the greatest humanitarian contribution one can make.”
Stewart-Robinson added that she wanted to be for her patients what mothers are to their children.
After earning her M.D. from Meharry Medical College, she earned her certification in pediatric cardiology from the same institution in 1947. The following year, she married Phil Robinson, whom she met through mutual friends. According to Michael Robinson, one of the first things the newlyweds did was make a commitment to serve the community.
Looking to escape the Jim Crow South, they moved to Detroit, where they raised three children: Maria, Theresa, and Michael. Phil Robinson landed a job working at the Detroit Department of Transportation; he later became a principal in the River Rouge School District.
The couple bought the two-family flat on Dexter Avenue and the family resided in the upstairs unit and converted the downstairs into Stewart-Robinson’s private practice. Stewart-Robinson also opened the Linwood Medical Center, a full-service medical center on Linwood near Davison.
She also worked at Children’s Hospital, Harper Hospital, Grace Hospital Crittenton Maternity, and Detroit Memorial Hospital. She worked as a Clinical Instructor at Wayne State University, too.
The family was also involved in the Civil Rights movement in Detroit. Stewart-Robison, a lifetime member of the NAACP, supported President John F. Kennedy. Phil Robinson marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963 when Dr. King delivered his original “I Have a Dream” speech.
However, Michael Robison said his family was hit with a series of tragedies. Just months after Phil Robinson marched with Dr. King, President Kennedy was assassinated. Two years after that, Dr. King was assassinated. But the hardest hit came when Stewart-Robinson, at 45 years old, died from cancer in 1965.
Michael Robinson said the Linwood Medical Center continued on in her memory until 1969, after its lead physician, A.D. Harris, was shot and killed during an armed robbery. In 1972, Phil Robinson worked with community partners and agencies to open the Lula Belle Stewart Center, a social services agency that operated for almost 40 years before closing in 2007.
The move toward historic designation
Before Stewart-Robinson died, the family moved from the Dexter home to the east side. The family maintained ownership of the Dexter property, with Phil Robinson renting it out for more than 30 years.
In 1998, after a potential sale of the home fell through, Michael Robinson, now an IT specialist, moved back in. By that time, he said, the home had fallen into disrepair. He remodeled it, restaining the hardware floors, repainting the walls, and replacing the furnace and broken appliances. He called the work a labor of love. When Phil Robinson died in 2006, Michael Robinson took ownership of the house.
Last spring, Michael Robinson began exploring the idea of getting the home a historic designation. He reached out to Janese Chapman, director of the city’s History Designation Advisory Board. Robinson said Chapman instructed him to gauge interest from the community.
The process became an enlightening experience for Michael Robinson, who hadn’t realized how much his mother’s legacy still reverberates across Detroit. He went to his local voting precinct, West Side Unity Church. During a Sunday service, Robinson shared his mission with the church. He recalled people’s eyes lighting up at his mentioning of the Linwood Medical Center and the Lula Belle Center. People stood and recalled memories of receiving treatment from Stewart-Robinson.
“Then the pastor of the church stood, and she told me that her brother was born with a congenital heart defect and my mother performed life-saving surgery on him,” Robinson said. “She told me that her brother is now a senior citizen with kids and grandchildren because of my mother.”
The pastor then told Robinson that she wanted to do whatever she could to help.
“That pastor was the honorable Dr. JoAnn Watson,” said Michael Robinson, adding his mother and Watson’s mother were close friends.
The Detroit City Council charged the Historic Designation Advisory Board with studying the proposed Dr. Lula Belle Stewart-Robinson House Historic District. Watson helped organize the board meetings at her West Side Unity Church. Watson died just three days before the first meeting.
The Historic Advisory Board released a report, concluding that the home meets the requirements for historic designation because it (1) “is where cultural, social, spiritual, economic, political or architectural history of the community, city, state or nation is particularly reflected or exemplified; (2) is identified with historic personages or with important events in community, city, state, or national history; and (3) [embodies] the distinguishing characteristics of an architectural specimen, inherently valuable as a representation of a period, style, or method of construction.
Michael Robinson said a historic designation for the home will not only memorialize his mother’s accomplishments and life-long dedication to serving Black children, but also it will help inspire younger Detroiters to pursue careers in STEM because the inequities his mother worked to remedy are still persistent today.
African American women suffer at the highest rate of childbirth issues mortality, according to the CDC. According to a study from the Lown Institute, an independent healthcare think tank, Detroit is the third most segregated hospital market in the nation.
Robison said the neighborhood has taken a hit since and the home is one of just only a few homes still landing on the block. He plans to purchase some of the adjacent land and use it to launch social and education programs in his parents’ honor. He plans to launch a podcast dedicated to spotlighting medical professions.
If the home is historically designated, it will be regulated by the Historic District Commission. Savage said Duggan could stamp his signature by the end of spring.
Robinson said once the designation is approved all visitors will be welcome.
“This place will certainly be open and available to anyone who wants to visit,” he said.
I didn’t know about the riches history that was by my church Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. I can recall hearing stories about the struggle for Black people and healthcare. She was definitely a true hero.
Lula Belle Stewart-Robinson was my pediatrician in Jackson, Ms until she married Phil Robinson and moved to Detroit. She lived up the street. I would visit her office after school and perform “nurses duties” (i.e., fill the containers with cotton balls and que-tips,etc. I was very upset when she married and moved away. I adored her. I have a picture of her on the wall in my bedroom.