May 1, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Tracy W. McGregor: Humanitarian, Philanthropist, and Detroit Civic Leader
by Philip P. Mason
Tracy W. McGregor, the son of a piano maker, married into one of Detroit’s richest families and, with the help of his wife, went on to be a leader of social work at the beginning of the 20th century.
Philip P. Mason, a professor emeritus at Wayne State University, describes both the personal life and the many charitable endeavors of Mr. McGregor and his wife, Katherine, who were major supporters of low-cost housing, education, the arts, and social services in Detroit.
In 1891, when Mr. McGregor was 22, his father died; the younger McGregor left Oberlin College and took over two religious missions for homeless men, founded by his father in Detroit and Toledo, Ohio. He married his wife, whose father owned a lumber company, in 1901, and the two worked together to give away their money.
In 1912, as immigration began to increase significantly, Mr. McGregor advocated a focus on the “social needs of the rising population, especially in the areas of city planning, sanitary housing, playgrounds for children, industrial education, child labor, and workmen’s compensation laws.”
He organized local leaders to pursue these goals, and they lobbied the city government — often successfully — for social change.
Mr. and Mrs. McGregor endowed the McGregor Fund in 1925, and “set the model for ‘participating philanthropy,’” Mr. Mason writes. The couple’s philanthropy and advocacy “made lasting contributions to Detroit during the vital era when it was emerging from a growing town to a major urban metropolis,” writes Mr. Mason.
Publisher: Wayne State University Press, Leonard N. Simons Building, 4809 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Mich. 48201; (800) 978-7323; http://wsupress.wayne.edu; 266 pages; $49.95; ISBN 0-8143-3376-1.
