The A G Gaston Motel in Birmingham

by Marie A Sutton

  “No one knew what to say, for no one knew what to do,” King wrote. “I was alone in that crowded room.”94

  King dismissed himself, went to the back of the suite and stood at the center of the floor, he said.

  “I think I was standing at the center of all that my life had brought me to be,” King wrote. “I thought of the Birmingham Negro community, waiting. Then my mind leaped beyond the Gaston Motel, past city lines and state lines, and I thought of the twenty million black people who dreamed that someday they might be able to cross the Red Sea of injustice and find their way to the Promised Land of integration and freedom. There was no more room for doubt.”95

  He changed into “work” clothes and went back to the crowd waiting.

  “I don’t know what will happen; I don’t know where the money will come from. But I have to make a faith act,” he told them.

  King walked up to Abernathy and told him that he was going to march. He said that his father could be there for his Atlanta congregation on Easter, but since Abernathy had no one to cover his church service on that day, he should go back to Atlanta.

  “Then he reached out and embraced me,” Abernathy wrote.96 “I knew what he was thinking: He might either be arrested and jailed for months or else be killed, given the pent-up emotions about to be loosed.

  “He was giving me a way out,” Abernathy continued. “But on this Good Friday, I wasn’t about to be Peter.”97

  Abernathy declared that he would be joining King.

  King linked arms with the others, and right there in the room, they sang in unison “We Shall Overcome.”

  Later that day, King and Abernathy were arrested. They were put in separate jail cells, and for the first twenty-four hours, King was put in solitary confinement and not allowed any communication. “No one was permitted to visit me, not even my lawyers,” King wrote. “Those were the longest, most frustrating and bewildering hours I have lived.”98

  King worried about his fellow marchers and his wife, Coretta, who had just given birth to their youngest child, Bernice. He didn’t know what his arrest was doing to the morale of the people.

  He had many questions.

  “You will never know the meaning of utter darkness until you have lain in such a dungeon, knowing that sunlight is streaming overhead and seeing only darkness below,”99 King wrote.

  President John F. Kennedy was alerted of King’s arrest, and he moved mountains to arrange for the minister’s wife to call him. Also, King’s attorneys, Arthur Shores and Orzell Billingsley, received permission to visit him. Not long after that, his friend and lawyer Clarence Jones from New York came for a visit. He told King that actor/singer Harry Belafonte had raised $50,000 for the bail money and had said, “Whatever else you need, he will raise it.”

  Those words “lifted a thousand pounds from my heart,” King wrote.

  April 14, Easter Sunday, arrived, and kneel-ins took place at white churches across the city.

  While in jail, King penned a response to the clergy who had written to him earlier. He started writing it in the margins of a newspaper, then on scraps of paper and finally in a notebook he was able to attain. Wyatt got the letter and pieced it together in the Gaston Motel.100 Here is part of what he wrote on April 16:

  My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

  While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas…But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

  …I am in Birmingham because injustice is here…I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

  …We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

  …Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.101

  Chapter 7

  AND A CHILD WILL LEAD THEM

  The longer King was in jail, the more the attention toward the movement’s efforts grew. But in an unsolicited and controversial move, Gaston paid the bail for King and Abernathy’s release. Gaston had always put up his money to help bail out protesters. In all, he had spent $160,000 of his money getting various demonstrators out of jail.102 But the timing of this was not well received by some.

  Andrew Young saw red. Gaston’s intentions for bailing out the men, Young felt, were “to persuade [King] to stop the demonstration and leave Birmingham.”103

  Gaston was “an Uncle Tom in the best sense,” he wrote.104 “He milked the system of segregation for millions of dollars.” Young suggested that Gaston “couldn’t sustain the enterprises without cooperation from white establishments: supplies could delay his deliveries; government inspections could find violations of state codes in his service businesses; local banks could refuse to honor his credit.”105

  “Gaston was a master at survival; he made money on segregation, and he made money during the movement—not one of us ever stayed a night free in Gaston’s Motel.”

  But King wasn’t angry. He accepted the bail and felt his release would allow him to be on-site to give strategy and solidarity. His release was the needed shot in the arm for his supporters, he felt.

  On April 25, NAACP executive secretary Roy Wilkins spoke at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church during the twenty-fourth nightly rally “of the Birmingham citizens working and marching against segregation.” King, Abernathy and Shuttlesworth were on the platform. Wilkins “hailed the work of Birmingham citizens who defied police dogs and other intimidation to protest segregation.”106

  With King in Birmingham, the world was watching. The motel became a revolving door for celebrities, politicians and movement supporters. “It was fantastic,” Ernest said. “They were all coming in to help the movement: Joan Baez, Bobby Kennedy.
We had people from the Office of Civil Rights, the FBI there at all times.”

  Even Young had to admit that “it would have been much harder to run a movement in Birmingham without Gaston’s motel and his restaurant.”107

  “I walked out every day, and there in the courtyard were people who would be internationally famous,” Stephanie remembered. “Dr. King would tap me on the head and say, ‘How are you doing?’ I saw all these people daily—Andrew Young, Wyatt Tee Walker.”

  “They had these huge concerts to fundraise for the movement, and they all stayed at the Gaston Motel,” Stephanie said. “Me, being the hostess and switchboard operator, I would see them all: Ike and Tina Turner, Johnny Mathis. All those people were just all around. It was a very interesting time.”

  The Gibsons remembered once when Stephanie served singer Johnny Mathis’s dinner. She gave him his plate but forgot an essential tool. “My parents tell the story that he said, ‘Darling, I can certainly eat this barbecue with my fingers, but I don’t know about this coleslaw. Can you get me a fork?’”

  The motel’s courtyard was where King would hold his daily press conferences. The area would be filled with reporters from around the world, supporters and locals. They all hung on the words of King, Shuttlesworth and others.

  “We had to provide phones and that nature so they could scramble to get the news back to their agencies so that people could report their stories,” Ernest said.

  There were any number of people from outside the United States, he said, people from Canada, England, any number of foreign countries. “It was good for the movement and basically a strategy of Dr. King for exposure, to create awareness of what was happening in Birmingham to let everyone know about the movement.”

  At one time, they had one hundred rabbis come down and donate money for the cause, he said.

  The visitors included performers, politicians and celebrities of all kinds: Nina Simone, Joe Lewis, Jackie Robinson, Ray Charles and his whole band. Roy Wilkins was in and out of the motel. Constance Baker Motley was always there. Wiley Branton Sr., the attorney for the Little Rock Nine, was there, too. Stephanie later married his son, Wiley Branton Jr.

  Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at a press conference at the Gaston Motel. Courtesy of Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

  “Gaston was beginning to resemble Grand Central Station at rush hour,” Andrew Young wrote. “The motel bubbled with activity and discussions on a twenty-four hour basis. It had become the site of a national meeting and greeting convention, an ongoing debating society on the pertinent questions of the movement, a place where supporters might meet or see or talk with Martin if he was available, a continuing education seminar on the movement conducted by Wyatt for visiting reporters and supporters, and a magnet for the curious celebrity hounds.”108

  “After the mass meetings, our staff would return to Martin’s room at Gaston’s for a time of fellowship,” Young wrote. “It was in these late night meetings that the real decisions and directions of the campaign were determined.”109

  “And, of course, there was food—Martin loved to eat—fried chicken or barbecued ribs, or both,” Young said. “I learned to love the ribs: there was something about the elemental act of chewing on bones that brought one back to basics and seemed to encourage honest searching among staff, discouraging the usual ego battles or jockeying for favor with Martin. It’s hard to put on airs when you in the middle of eating messy ribs.”110

  During the day, King was often quiet and reflective, Young wrote, “but at night he came alive and dominated the gatherings with a mixture of playful preaching and joke telling, a side of his personality he rarely displayed in public…His manner set the tone for a relaxed analysis of the day’s activities and a leisurely charting of strategy for the next few days. Often it was 2:00 a.m. or later before we began to drift off to bed, leaving Martin, Ralph, and A.D. the last ones to turn in. It was these fellowships I remember most about that time. They were sheer joy, and Martin’s energy and charisma were as dominant in this kind of small gathering as on any major speaking platform.”111

  YOU NEVER KNEW WHO YOU WOULD SEE AT THE GASTON

  “Everybody who was anybody was there,” said Dale Long. “Even the Anglo reporters and photographers couldn’t stay at the Tutwiler and such if they didn’t want their equipment torn up.”

  Long also said he had fond memories of comedian Dick Gregory being at the motel and recalls his dad bringing Gregory home. “I remember listening to the stories. It made such an impression.”

  Long also recalls one day seeing a nice car drive up to the motel. “It was Sam Cooke,” he said.“He was sitting there like he was all that and then some.”

  Photographer Robert Adelman came to the motel because he was covering the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Congress of Racial Equality (SNCC). “We heard there were big doings in Birmingham,” he said. He hitched a ride down there and stayed at the motel because he refused to patronize the Tutwiler Hotel or other white hotel that would not allow blacks.“I was trying to fight segregation, not support it,” he said.

  He was traveling with fellow photographer Bruce Davidson. The next morning, he went onto the restaurant patio and had a breakfast of eggs and grits in the outdoor courtyard. “Sitting at one of the tables was Dr. King,” he remembered. He joined him, and so did twenty-three-year-old folk singer Joan Baez, as well as some reporter from Time magazine.

  Comedian Dick Gregory walking with a group. Courtesy of Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

  Baez was mercilessly needling the reporter, Adelman remembered. She told him that reporters thought they knew everything. “She was very young and had a lot of attitude about the press,” he said. “She gave the reporter a hard time.”

  Dr. King laughed and laughed, Adelman remembered. “He was soft-spoken. He looked you right in the eye and gave you his full attention.”

  Baez was in town to perform at Miles College for a Sunday, May 5 concert. During the event, she spotted a woman with a bandage and stopped to acknowledge her: “I hope that doesn’t hurt too bad.”

  Among her playlist, she sang “We Shall Overcome.”112

  Adelman heard Dr. King speak at Sixteenth Street Church. He was also there when some of the protesting took place. “The demonstrations were hair-raising, very frightening,” he said and added that he ended up staying only a few days. “I wasn’t hanging around.”

  The Gibsons could understand why. “As I look back now, it was very exciting,” Ernest said. “At the same time, it was really tough.”

  Especially when guests did not pay their bills, he said. “I never had any problems with the movement paying,” he said. “The problem I had with people paying were people coming out of New York and entertainers. They would come in to perform at rallies, stay in the motel and do their performances for Martin and the group.”

  A ticket to a Joan Baez concert at Miles College. Courtesy of Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

  He said that the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, and several others checked in and left without taking care of the bill, owing Gibson up in the thousands.

  Washington remembers spotting a young Jesse Jackson outside the motel. Washington was teaching at Booker T. Washington Business College across the street. His students also saw Jackson and wanted a chance to go over and meet him.

  “I introduced myself,” Washington said. He told the activist about his students wanting to meet him, but Jackson sent him back with his tail tucked beneath him. “He said, ‘I don’t have time for that,’” Washington remembered. “[Jackson] was standing on the side wanting to be seen.”

  TENDING TO THE MOVEMENT

  The Gibsons’ lives became enmeshed with those of the movement leaders, they said. Even little things became a concern for them, like the time King came out of jail and was looking very unkempt.

  Gibson told the preacher, “You need to wash up. You still need a haircut.”

  “Where can I get a haircut?” King a
sked. Gibson took him to a local barber. The customers were so excited, Gibson remembered.

  “He talked to everybody and then said, ‘We are going to go.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute. Let me pay the person,’ because Martin never had any money and never [had to] pay for anything. He just go get what he want and walk out.”

  King said, “You’ve got to pay for that?”

  The barber said, “No.”

  King said, “I told you you ain’t got to pay. It’s just a haircut.”

  Then, King went around and spoke to everyone and hugged everybody, Gibson remembered.

  Gibson also recalled a time when he tried to help King get more comfortable for his protest work. “Martin would always dress nice—nice suits and ties and shirts,” Gibson said. “But when he returned from marching, he’d look like he had been sleeping on the railroad tracks. They beat him. He was bloody, dirty, needed a shave and all that. I always liked to wear, when I was working the yard in Arkansas, coveralls. I said to Martin, ‘I am getting tired of you and these suits you are wearing. We gonna take these shirts off and suits off. I got him some overalls.’”

  “Abernathy got mad, said, ‘Where is mine?’ I said, ‘Hell, you are too fat. I don’t have anything big enough to fit you,’” Gibson said. “You would see [King] in jail with those jumpsuits. Those were mine.”

  TIME FOR A NEW DIRECTION

  After spending days and weeks covering the happenings of the movement, the local and national media began to lose interest. King and his group felt that something extraordinary needed to take place to continue the momentum of national interest. Jim Bevel, director of direct action and nonviolent education for the SCLC, had the solution.