The A G Gaston Motel in Birmingham

by Marie A Sutton

  A few miles away, in North Birmingham, sat Collegeville and Acipco-Finley. Many blacks who lived there were blue-collar workers with cracked hands and soft hearts. They lived in an area that sprouted out of housing developed for the employees of Sloss-Sheffield Corporation, Southern Railroad, U.S. Pipe, Jim Walters Corporation and GATX Tank Corporation.7 Instead of playing among a row of Colonial-style houses, the children in parts of the area played among railyards and old coal cars beneath gray skies laced with sulfur and where the whistle of passing trains filled the air.

  They weren’t spared the hand of the Klan, either. Their homes, and even churches, were being bombed just like in Smithfield. Nothing a Negro owned or loved was ever not at the mercy of a dynamite-wielding klansman.

  Many of the residents of Collegeville, Smithfield and the like worked and owned businesses in the historic Fourth Avenue Business District, which was a thriving, bustling area. Strict segregation laws kept blacks out of certain parts of downtown, and a line of demarcation outlined the area. East of Eighteenth Street North was for whites only, while west of the line toward Fifteenth Street was for blacks. Every inch of the Fourth Avenue District was populated with black-owned businesses like printing shops, restaurants, beauty salons and law firms. All the parties, shows and social club soirées were likely held somewhere in the area.

  The seven-story Colored Masonic Temple was a showpiece in the district. The brick and limestone Renaissance Revival–style building was erected by the black-owned Windham Construction Company and featured a grand ballroom where concerts, dances and society events were held. When the white community invited a big-name African American artist to perform at one of its venues, black promoters would often invite that same artist to stop by the Temple to perform for a crowd of their own people.8

  A few streets over, the Alabama Penny Savings Bank was a source of pride. It was the first black-owned and operated financial institution in Birmingham and was housed in the six-story brick Pythian Temple that was also constructed by the Windham Company.9 The bank financed the construction of homes and churches of many blacks during that time, according to the National Historic Register.

  During the day, the area swelled with people darting in and out of buildings, doing business, having lunch and making social calls. “It was the hub of the city for African Americans,” Drew remembered.

  At night, the streets within the district were nearly busting with folks dressed in their Sunday’s best. People packed into the Carver and Famous Theaters, as well as countless restaurants, poolrooms and dancehalls, including the Little Savoy Café, which was built in the style of New York’s Harlem Savoy Ballroom. The upstairs kitchen produced an endless supply of mouthwatering chicken and steak dinners, and downstairs in the hall you could catch performances by Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Lionel Hampton and many others.10

  “I used to love the way they dressed, like in a movie, like Harlem Nights,” said Washington, who as a young man would try to go inside the area nightspots. “We would go in, peep in the door and they would put us out.”

  During that time, the black middle class was growing at a rapid pace. The community roster grew long with names that would later be in history books like Attorney Arthur Shores, famed deejay Shelley “The Playboy” Stewart and business mogul A.G. Gaston. Gaston was a short-statured, chocolate-brown man who had a penchant for dapper dress and a stern business sense.

  “He always wore three-piece suits with a little watch chain,” wrote civil rights icon and former United States ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young in his book An Easy Burden.11

  A.G. Gaston. Photo by Chris McNair of Chris McNair Studios.

  “He was the very image of dignity and wealth,” Young wrote, “except for his brown skin.”

  Gaston, who had only a tenth-grade education,12 made millions catering to the needs of blacks, a clientele that was often ignored by white business owners. He owned funeral homes, a bank, an insurance company and a radio station; hosted spelling bees for colored children; and founded a girls’ and boys’ club. He was known for servicing African Americans from the cradle to the grave and advertised his businesses as “strictly 100 percent Negro.”13

  “He was the most powerful man in Birmingham,” Washington said. “What he said was the rule of the day, and he generally got what he wanted.”

  GASTON WAS BORN IN a log cabin in Demopolis, Alabama, on the Fourth of July 1892. His father, “Papa” as he was known, died seeking work with the Alabama Great Southern Railroad construction project,14 and his mother, Rosie, was a beloved domestic who cooked and cleaned for A.B. and Minnie Loveman, one of the most affluent white families in the area. The Lovemans owned the popular Loveman, Joseph & Loeb Department Stores.

  Born a generation out of slavery, Gaston grew up knowing his place as a black man living in the South. He wrote in his biography, Green Power:

  Any “nigger” who did not jump off the sidewalk when they came by was considered “biggity” by the whole community, and just not well brought up. Most of the civic leaders and professional men were members of the Klan…So, when as a boy I watched a lynching on the street corner, there was no doubt in my mind justice prevailed and that the punishment was surely deserved.15

  The Jim Crow way of life did not totally cripple Gaston’s family, however. His mother at one time ran a catering business with clients who included some of Birmingham’s wealthiest white families.16 Gaston’s grandparents Joe and Idella were born slaves but, after being freed, became business owners who taught him a strong work ethic.

  Gaston’s first business, down in Demopolis, was selling rides on his family’s tire swing. As a young boy, he charged the neighborhood kids a button to ride and ended up with a coffer full.

  In 1905, at age thirteen, Gaston moved to Birmingham to be with his mother. She had moved earlier to help the Lovemans relocate to the city. The Lovemans lived in a two-story brick home on the exclusive Rhodes Circle. Gaston and his mother resided in the servants’ quarters a short walk away.

  Rosie soon enrolled the young boy in the Tuggle Institute, a local boarding school for Negroes who were taught and cared for by Carrie “Granny” Tuggle. The school was located in the middle-class-populated Enon Ridge, which was in north Birmingham. Tuggle was a former slave who had a passion for training up young colored children. She exposed them to the teachings of Booker T. Washington, who was also a former slave turned educator, author and advisor to U.S. presidents. Washington was often a presence on the Tuggle campus and went on to be a major influence on Gaston. His book, Up from Slavery, was the first one Gaston read.17

  When Gaston was older, he began to lay the groundwork for an empire that was built by “filling a need” of the black community. Fresh from fighting the enemy in World War I and back home working among a corps of men in the Westfield mining village, he and his mother started selling her homemade lunches, many of which consisted of fried chicken, sweet potatoes and flaky biscuits.18 Then he began making loans to his spend-happy co-workers at a 25 percent interest, which didn’t bother him one bit. “In the first place, he was poor, too, and this was merely a way of working to better his own situation. Second, while he had sympathy for the men who were trapped in the mine system, they were not, by and large, his friends.”19

  After a while, Gaston noticed that many black families in his community lacked the means to give their loved ones proper burials. At that time, the mortality rate for blacks in the segregated South was abysmal, and many wanted the memorial services of their loved ones to be special, filled with the pomp and circumstance they never received in this life. A crop of swindlers would supposedly raise funds for dead relatives but were pocketing the profits, Gaston had discovered.

  “It was a racket,” he was quoted as saying,20 “and I resented it.”

  Gaston wanted to remedy this, so he founded a burial society. Members paid him a twenty-five-cent weekly premium for the head of the family and ten cents for each additional member.21 In the ev
ent of their death, they got a first-class funeral.

  Locals thought it was a great idea, and the premiums began to come in. But before Gaston could get started good, his first member, Mrs. Sara Emmons, died. He didn’t have enough for her funeral. But after much working, negotiating and even prayer, he was able to give the woman a dignified service.

  “With a mixture of amazement, joy and relief, I thought, ‘Well Brother Gaston, like it or not, it looks like you are in business,’” Gaston wrote.22

  Tight-fisted with his money and frugal to a fault, Gaston saved enough to expand his reach. After gradual success, he ended up with his own insurance company, then funeral home and next a chain of them. He opened a bank and construction company and even tried his hand at making his own soda.

  His first wife and childhood sweetheart, the plump and pretty Creola Smith Gaston, died young right when he was on the cusp of launching his empire. Gaston married his second wife, the lively and beautiful Minnie, in 1943 on the front porch of her sister’s New York home.23 The Tuskegee graduate was a native of rural Lowndes County. She was the fourth of fifteen children and was there by Gaston’s side as he grew his enterprises to empire status.

  By 1951, Gaston had acquired the largest Negro cemetery in Birmingham—New Grace Hill Cemetery—and then Mason City Cemetery.24 “With the purchase of these sites, Gaston could now control every level of dying, from preparation to interment.”25

  Minnie Gardner. Photo by Chris McNair of Chris McNair Studios.

  But there was more to him than that, said Reverend Don Solomon, who worked for Gaston for many years. “Dr. Gaston was also a big church man,” Solomon, who is a local Baptist preacher, said. He was heavily involved in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and attended the historic St. John AME Church downtown.

  In 1951, Gaston was invited to be the official AME Church delegate to the World Ecumenical Conference in Oxford, England.26 He was thrilled. The last time Gaston had been in Europe, he was a solider in the army. At that time, the French embraced him and didn’t call him a “nigger” or give him limited or no access to their restaurants and stores.

  In France, he was treated like a man. In France, he could walk the streets without jumping off the sidewalks when a white person strolled by. In France, it was clear, the white people respected his uniform regardless of his color; respected his allegiance to democracy and his willingness to fight for it. In France, it seemed anything was possible for a man like Arthur Gaston.27

  When Gaston returned back to Alabama after the war, however, he received the opposite reception in the stiff-necked South. He vowed to visit Europe again, and now he had his chance. The trip to England would prove important in Gaston’s legacy, as it would be there that he would stumble upon an idea that would expand his empire and also put him at the center of Birmingham’s fight for civil rights, whether he wanted it to or not.

  Chapter 2

  A FEATHER IN BIRMINGHAM’S CAP

  I decided to construct on this land a really fine motel for the Negro citizens of Birmingham.

  —A.G. Gaston, owner of the A.G. Gaston Motel

  With an invitation to attend the Methodist conference in Oxford, England, Gaston was set to return to Europe. In August 1951, he and Minnie embarked on their journey overseas. They would dock the Queen Elizabeth out of New York, and since Minnie had family in the city, she and A.G. spent a few days socializing before setting sail.

  In the Big Apple, miles away from the segregated South, Jim Crow didn’t restrict the two. The couple stayed at the Waldorf Astoria luxury hotel,28 though Gaston balked at the pricey rates. Back in Birmingham, Gaston would have been arrested for trying to check into a resort of that caliber. Here, he and his money were welcomed.

  Minnie’s sister Elizabeth Jenkins and her husband, Edwin, ran the Printing Trades School on Park Avenue South in Manhattan.29 The couple, as well as other family and friends, fêted the Gastons in high fashion and gave them a bon voyage gala,30 which was covered by the media and included lots of champagne and well wishes via telegram.

  After a high time in New York, the couple docked for England. Inside the boat, they stayed in a lavish stateroom that was adorned with bouquets of blooming flowers and bunches of ripe, colorful fruit.31 The only other colored family in first class was the Brights, who were diplomats traveling back to their home in Liberia, West Africa, after having visited the embassy in Washington.32

  Minnie and A.G. Gaston. Photo by Chris McNair of Chris McNair Studios.

  When the Gastons arrived in London, a chauffeur greeted them and drove them around in a Rolls-Royce that friends from IBM provided for the couple’s use. Gaston made full use of his time abroad. He spent hours in the John Wesley room at Lincoln College in Oxford reading the history of the early Methodist Church.33 He and Minnie also traveled all across Europe, venturing into Buckingham Palace, riding canals in Amsterdam and touring the Holland dikes.34

  After several trips around town, members of the Scotland Yard, or the local police, began to follow the Gastons, he noted. After some investigating, Gaston learned that locals thought he was famous. They suspected that he was Edmund Anderson, the actor who played the valet Rochester on The Jack Benny Show.35 The police officials thought it wise to follow them in order to provide them with protection.

  While at the conference, Gaston got word that the National Sunday School and Baptist Training Union Congress of the National Baptist Convention was considering coming to Birmingham in 1954.36 With thousands of pastors and parishioners scheduled to attend, this would be one of the largest meetings of its kind to come to the city, according to the black-owned Birmingham World newspaper.

  This gave Gaston mixed feelings: joy, at the thought of Birmingham being the site for such a great economic opportunity, and disheartenment knowing that blacks would have to struggle to find adequate lodging. The housing issue could jeopardize the group’s decision to come, he thought. Gaston saw that as an opportunity to, once again, “fill a need” in the black community.

  “I began to consider the accommodations available for such a gathering in Birmingham,” he said.37 “I was proud of the city and had many friends in the Convention…It disturbed me that facilities for Negroes were so limited. White hotels did not accept all races and, with one or two exceptions, the Negro-operated hotels were little more than shelters for transients.”

  Traveling across the American South with black skin created many inconveniences. You had to arrange lodging with family or church members in the area or take a chance in meager accommodations or boardinghouses. Even Gaston, although he owned millions, could not sleep or eat wherever he wanted below the Mason-Dixon line.

  Andrew Young wrote in An Easy Burden about hearing a man describe how Gaston drove his big Chrysler to a Chinese restaurant and had to pick up his food at the back door like the other Negroes. “The stinking kitchen door,” the man told Young. “And he’s the richest black man I ever heard of.”38

  Carolyn McKinstry, who grew up in Birmingham’s Thomas area, remembers the pains her family experienced while traveling in the South. Whenever they headed along the highways and byways, they had to pack lunches because they would not be guaranteed to find a restaurant that served blacks.

  You only stopped to get gas, she said. Also, when the time would come to use the restroom, it would be challenging. You either had to learn to position yourself near the car for privacy or hope you would see a black person sitting on a porch so that you could ask to use their bathroom, she said.

  According to Dr. Thomas Sugrue, professor of history and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, blacks often “carried buckets or portable toilets in their car trunks” when traveling. Bathrooms and roadside rest areas were off limits to them, he wrote in Driving While Black: The Car and Race Relations in Modern America. “Black motorists also found it difficult to find places to stay: most roadside motels—north and south—refused to admit blacks,” Sugrue wrote. “Diners and fine restaurants alike regul
arly turned away black customers.”

  Out of a great need for information about where blacks could lodge from state to state, The Negro Traveler’s Green Book was born. Published by Victor H. Green from 1936 to 1964, it was created to help blacks navigate the U.S. roadways.

  The white traveler has had no difficulty in getting accommodations, but with the Negro it has been different. He, before the advent of a Negro travel guide, had to depend on word of mouth, and many times accommodations were not available.39

  The black middle class was growing, and Gaston knew it. Many members of the community were tired of being treated like second-class citizens. They had the desire and the ability to pay for something better.

  Whenever an African American celebrity or dignitary came to Birmingham, he would often have to stay with local families who had the means and the extra room to put him up, said Edna Gardner, the matriarch of Minnie Gaston’s family. When famed educator and civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune came to town, she stayed with the Gastons, as did Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. Baseball great Jackie Robinson had to stay with a family a few doors down, Gardner said.

  At the same time, hotels for blacks began popping up in cities across the country. There was the Edward Lee Motel in Jackson, Mississippi; the Sprague Street Hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana; the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee; and many others, remembered Shelly Stewart, a wildly popular disc jockey—to white and black listeners—who traveled the country, staying in many of those hotels. Hotels for blacks became a necessity for African American performers, travelers and those with professions that required them to be on the road.

  There were hotels that accommodated blacks in Birmingham like the Fraternal Hotel, the Palm Leaf Hotel and Nancy’s—all within blocks of one another. And several local nightclub owners, out of necessity, opened roadside inns. The Madison Night Spot on Bessemer Super Highway had an accompanying motel next door. The Grand Terrace Night Club, located in town, had the Grand Terrace Cabins beside it. When entertainers played those clubs, they would stay next door at the inn, Stewart said.