Arthur George Gaston (July 4, 1892 – January 19, 1996) was an American entrepreneur who established businesses in Birmingham, Alabama. He had a significant role in the movement to remove legal barriers to integration in Birmingham in 1963. In his lifetime, Gaston's companies were some of the most prominent African-American businesses in the American South.
Early life
The grandson of an enslaved person, A.G. Gaston was born on July 4, 1892, in Demopolis, Alabama to Tom and Rosa (McDonald) Gaston. Gaston's father died while he was still an infant. He grew up in a log cabin with his mother and grandparents, Joe and Idella Gaston. He moved to Birmingham in 1905 with the Loveman family, who employed his mother as a cook. he served in the army in France during World War I and then went to work in the mines run by Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company in Fairfield and Westfield, Alabama.
Business growth
While working in the mines, he hit on the plan of selling lunches to his fellow miners and then branched into loaning money to them at 25% interest. having noticed that mine widows would come to the mines and to local churches to collect donations in order to bury their husbands and he wondered if people would "give a few dimes into a burial society to bury their dead".
In 1938, Gaston bought and renovated a property on the edge of Kelly Ingram Park in downtown Birmingham, where, in partnership with his father-in-law, A. L. Smith, he started the Smith & Gaston Funeral Home.
Realizing that there were not enough black people with sufficient training to be able to work in the insurance and funeral industries, in 1939 he and his second wife, Minnie L. Gardner Gaston, established the Booker T. Washington business school. (His first wife, Creola Smith Gaston, died in 1938.) Other Gaston enterprises included Citizens Federal Savings and Loan Association, the first black-owned financial institution in Birmingham in more than forty years. On July 1, 1954, Gaston opened the A.G. Gaston Motel on a site adjoining Kelly Ingram Park.
Political activities
Gaston kept a low political profile through most of the 1940s and 1950s. Although he was reluctant to confront white authorities and the white business establishment directly, he supported the civil rights movement financially. He offered financial support to Autherine Lucy, When Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a civil rights leader in Birmingham, founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights in the wake of the outlawing of the NAACP in the State of Alabama in 1956, the group held its first meeting at Smith & Gaston's offices. challenging both Birmingham's segregation laws and Local Police Commissioner Bull Connor's authority, Gaston opposed the plan and tried to deflect the campaign from public confrontation into negotiations with white business leaders. Gaston posted $5000 bail for Dr. Martin Luther King and Reverend Abernathy when they were arrested.
That unity nearly dissolved, however, after Abernathy made comments about alleged "Uncle Toms" and Dr. King made a call for unity on April 9, 1963, that made it clear that he would press forward with his plans for confrontation. Gaston issued a press release in response in which he obliquely criticized King by lamenting the lack of communication between white business leaders and "local colored leadership".
That press release exposed a significant rift between the activists in the Civil Rights Movement. Hosea Williams described Gaston as a "super Uncle Tom" to the press The leaders of the movement were eager, however, to avoid any public airing of those differences; Shuttlesworth soon apologized, SCLC leaders treated the press release as an expression of support for their campaign while Dr. King announced creation of a special committee of local leaders, including Gaston, to meet every morning to approve each day's plans.
That committee had no real power, however, as became clear when the movement encouraged school children to march against segregation on May 2, 1963. Gaston protested the strategy, telling King: "Let those kids stay in school. They don't know nothing." King replied, "Brother Gaston, let those people go into the streets where they'll learn something." The demonstrations continued.
Violence against Gaston
Because of his stance as a negotiator, Gaston often faced challenges by proponents from both sides of the civil rights issue.
Gaston remained disaffected from Dr. King, urging him to stay away, in a statement released in September 1963, after Dr. King announced plans to return to Birmingham to resume demonstrations.
On May 11, 1963, four people probably associated with the KKK attempted to blow up the part of the A.G. Gaston Motel where King and Abernathy were staying; the home of Martin Luther King's brother Reverend A. D. King was also bombed. Later that night, the bombings sparked riots by African Americans in the community in a 28-block section of Birmingham. The local police officers and state troopers responded to the crisis and subsequently beat rioters and bystanders. More than fifty people were injured as police were dispatched to clear Kelly Ingram Park.
On September 8, 1963, unidentified persons threw firebombs at Gaston's house, a day after he and his wife had attended a state dinner at the White House with President John F. Kennedy.
On the night of January 24, 1976, Gaston and his wife were kidnapped and beaten by an intruder, and Gaston was abducted in his own car; police officers found him two hours later, bound in the back seat of the car. He left behind an insurance company, the Booker T. Washington Insurance Company; a construction firm, the A.G. Gaston Construction Company, Smith and Gaston Funeral Home, and a financial institution, CFS Bancshares. The City of Birmingham owns the motel. His net worth was estimated to be more than $130,000,000 at the time of his death.
He is the subject of the 2004 biography Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire, written by his niece and grandniece, Carol Jenkins; Elizabeth Gardner Hines.
In 2017, President Barack Obama designated the A.G. Gaston Motel the center of the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument.
Notes
References
- Gaston, A. G. (1968), Green Power: The Successful Way of A. G. Gaston. Birmingham: Southern University Press
- Carol, Jenkins; Elizabeth Gardner Hines (December 2003). Black Titan, A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire. New York: One World/Ballantine. .
- Bailey, Richard, They Too Call Alabama Home By Pyramid Publishing.
- Interview with A. G. Gaston from Eyes on the Prize.
- Marshall, David (July 1976). "A. G. Gaston: The Story of a Poor Boy From Demopolis Who Became One of the South's Leading Entrepreneurs". Black Enterprise: pp. 31–33.
- Chenrow, Fred; Carol Chenrow (1973). Reading Exercises in Black History, Volume 1. Elizabethtown, PA: The Continental Press, Inc. p. 30. .