The A G Gaston Motel in Birmingham

by Marie A Sutton

  Courtesy of Brenda Jones.

  Courtesy of Brenda Jones.

  Springer and his band left around 1970. He said that “somebody told Balton to get a rock band.”

  “I was disappointed that once integration happened it turned into a disco,” Long said. “For it to be such an elegant place, I resented that it turned into a disco.”

  Chapter 10

  OUT OF PLACE

  By the 1970s, blacks had gained access to more education and better jobs and, therefore, began a slow ascent up the corporate ladder. The big downtown businesses and corporations started to open their doors and offer several African Americans professional positions, including some management roles.

  As a result, the Gaston Motel, with its rich history and central location, became the place many of these workers could go for refuge and to be among their own. During lunchtime and happy hour, it was buzzing with black professionals, according to George A. Washington.

  “Younger blacks were just starting to move into professional positions at some of the larger corporations in town,” said Brenda Faush, who was among them. She worked at Alabama Power Company, which was a leader in hiring African American professionals in Birmingham, she said. There was a group of black professionals who referred to themselves as BAPCO, which stood for Black Alabama Power Company employees, she said. This was the first group of folks who were hired into professional-level positions.

  “It was weird,” she said of working in that role during the early days. “You would walk through the halls and go through the break rooms, and people would look at you as if you had two heads. They had never seen black professionals.”

  So, after hours, Faush and the others all fled to the Gaston “as a way to survive what was going on at the corporation and from the employees who were not used to associating with blacks in those settings,” she said. “It was not a formalized group, and it was an underground thing,” she said. “It was a way to support and strengthen each other when we were not necessarily celebrated at that time.”

  Shelley Millender recalled that time, too. He was one of the first full-time black automobile salesmen in the Birmingham area and a regular at the motel. He often came with his contemporaries with a mission to get a reprieve from the stressors and stares from the outside community, he said.

  “All of these pseudo-elite would congregate at Gaston’s,” he said. Millender later went on to work at Coca-Cola and would come into the Gaston lounge with his colleagues, who would sport their red jackets, a signature of the company’s professionals.

  The area teachers and school administrators also had their after-hours spot at the Gaston. They unofficially called themselves the “Coffee Club,” said Charles Townsend, a retired principal who frequented the place.

  The teachers, whose workday ended at 3:30 p.m., would be the first to get to the motel lounge, Townsend said. The Coffee Club members weren’t drinking coffee, though, he said with a laugh. It was usually a stronger drink. They would come in, drink beers and argue about politics.

  Across the street at the Gaston-owned urban radio station WENN, the local deejays would beeline over to the Gaston. “A lot of the WENN radio deejays would come in between shows to have a drink,” Washington said. One of the popular ones was known for setting a timer in between song sets, getting drunk and then stumbling back into the studio in time to get back on the air, Washington recalled.

  “The Gaston complex was the hub for a lot of folks,” Faush said. “They would all come from different walks of communities. These days, it seems farfetched that people would all come to one place where they felt they could go feel celebrated and feel like they belong. That one place, the motel, served as that anchor.”

  As it had been in the past, on any given day, you would see the best and brightest of Birmingham’s black community enjoying the music, food and fellowship of the Gaston. But as the years stretched toward the 1980s, with lots of competition for food, music and lodging, business began to slow.

  The downfall of the motel, according to Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire by Carol Jenkins and Elizabeth Gardner Hines, “was a result of one of the most profound effects of the civil rights movement…With the end of segregation blacks were free to take their business anywhere they chose, and to the detriment of the black business community, many black citizens chose to spend their money where they could get the best deals—which was more often than not in white-owned stores, whose larger financial bases and backing generally allowed them to offer deeper discounts and broader selection than their black competitors.”

  Reverend Don Solomon agreed. “The closer we got to integration, the less we [blacks] became the residents of the motel,” he said.

  “Holiday Inn and everybody else said, ‘Come on, we ready for you. Everything is lovely,’” Solomon said. “Gaston just became a competitor trying to get some people in there; everything was wide open then. We went straight to everywhere, except the motel.”

  “Eventually, it became unprofitable,” he said. “When an opportunity came to be considered first class like the rest of the folks, we naturally went to the rest of the folk. That is what happens when you come out of the cotton field; you cannot help yourself,” Solomon said. “You go where the bright lights are. No one wants to stay near the cotton fields.”

  Gaston would remark on how the customers just disappeared, Solomon said. “They didn’t go out of town; they were around the corner.”

  Millender agreed. “We lost a lot in the transition and did not know how well we had it, and by then we could not get it back,” he said, referring to a time when black businesses thrived because all they had was one another.

  “We used to be called by another name. Then our dollar started counting, and they started calling us ‘Mister,’” he said. “Right then, I knew something was funny, wrong.”

  Also, tourism to the city took a hit, according to Black Titan. People were reluctant to visit Birmingham after its international reputation for past civil unrest.123 So management attempted to call it quits. “But it was the only business that tried to go out of business and couldn’t,” said Washington. “The loyal customers wouldn’t let it close. They kept coming.”

  A group of the faithful few patrons would come daily to watch the evening news in the lounge, he said. One day, someone broke into the motel and stole the TV. “Management wouldn’t replace it,” Washington said. But the regular customers would not be defeated. “We got together and bought a TV,” Washington said.

  “They were trying to quit,” he said of the management. “They were looking at the books. They weren’t making the kind of money they thought they should.”

  “It went on like that for a long time,” he continued. “Eventually, they just locked the door.”

  Then one day, a newspaper article announced the motel’s fate and an attempt at being reinvented. “A.G. Gaston Motel and Lounge has been an institution in the black business district for almost three decades…Changing times have rendered it virtually useless,” wrote Jeff Hardy on Tuesday, December 14, 1982, in the Birmingham News.

  “We are officially out of the restaurant, motel and bar business,” said Louis Willie, executive director of Booker T. Washington Insurance Company, the entity that managed the property. “It is no longer profitable and we decided to convert it to its highest and best use. We are businessmen we decided and it would be foolish to hang onto the hotel for sentimental reasons when it could be used for something useful.”

  The company invested half a million dollars to make the motel into thirty-nine two-bedroom apartments for the elderly and handicapped. A contract was signed with the Birmingham Housing Authority to take applications. The rent for the residents could be subsidized by the city through the Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation program. Each unit included a living room, kitchen, bedroom and bath. The popular lounge was converted into a community area. A plaque in the room where Dr. King stayed would be the only reminder of th
e motel’s past, Willie said.

  In response to the closing, Birmingham resident Dr. Hattie Bryant Greene wrote to the Birmingham News on November 17, 1982:

  One can’t help bemoan the news of the closing of the A.G. Gaston Motel as it opens its doors now for the handicapped. Ever the man to be mindful of those who are less fortunate, Dr. A.G. Gaston has set the type of example which projects the Christian spirit.

  One looks back over the years and remembers the many affairs, especially those of a religious and social nature, which I have had the honor to organize at the motel—when we, as a Negro race, had no place else to go.

  It was with pride after the opening that we could journey into other cities and boast of our first-class motel owned and operated by one of our people. It gave us a sense of belonging…Here was the first motel in Birmingham in which Negroes could live. When groups didn’t have the means to cover all expenses of their out-of-town guests, we just had to say to Dr. Gaston “…will you look out for them at your place?” The answer was always, “Send them on.”124

  And it seemed the loss was greater than the motel, Millender pointed out. “Not only did we lose Gaston’s, I don’t know of any black grocery stores,” he said. “We had a lot of black-owned restaurants downtown, record shops, sewing machine repair shops, dress shops. We have a very pronounced absence of black businesses in this area. We didn’t cling to those jobs or positions we were forced to have.”

  Eventually, the apartments for the elderly shut their doors, too. The City of Birmingham acquired ownership, and the motel has sat vacant for many years, with some attempts to revive it.

  A present-day photo of the A.G. Gaston Motel. Courtesy of the author.

  Courtesy of the author.

  According to media reports in 2003, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute announced plans to take the hotel and expand on its facility, but those were shelved. In 2007, St. Louis developer Michael V. Roberts proposed a $40 million project that would include an upscale hotel, retail space, meeting area and lofts. In this plan, he would have made the motel an interactive museum to complement the BCRI, a concept similar to the National Civil Rights Museum. William Bell, who was a city councilor at the time, supported the plan, but an agreement was never reached with then-mayor Bernard Kincaid.

  Courtesy of the author.

  In 2012, Bell, who became Birmingham mayor, gave the A.G. Gaston Construction Company the task of evaluating the motel’s redevelopment opportunities in what is now the city’s civil rights district. This was in advance of a planned 2013 yearlong commemoration of the 1963 Birmingham movement. The company was to study the area and present redevelopment options and had volunteered its efforts to do so. According to the Birmingham News, however, a report was supposedly due in three months and nothing manifested.125

  Courtesy of the author.

  In 2013, Birmingham remembered the pivotal events of 1963 with a year of commemorative events. The city spent at least $600,000 for commemoration-related elements, which included two new monuments at Kelly Ingram Park, civil rights trail signs and funding to Miles College and Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Yet the motel languished. “A.G. Gaston Motel: Civil Rights Era Landmark a Deteriorating Relic Overlooked in 50th Anniversary Fanfare” read a headline in the Birmingham News. Critics wondered why, during all the celebrations, the motel still sat abandoned. A graffiti artist vandalized the motel the month the article was published.

  Courtesy of the author.

  Birmingham city councilman Johnathan Austin, in whose district the motel sits, told the media that the city should preserve the motel just as city government requires citizens to keep up their private properties. His fellow councilman Steven Hoyt said it is disgraceful that nothing is being done.

  Courtesy of the author.

  Hoyt called the decaying motel a “symbol of the city’s indifference toward less-glamorous elements that require real attention. While the city’s history is celebrated this year, a significant portion of it languishes in neglect,” he told local media.

  Courtesy of the author.

  Today, many passersby do not even notice the place as they zoom along Fifth Avenue North. It has become invisible. A place that once was a symbol, jumping with sound and movement, is now unnoticed and seemingly forgotten. Talks continue, as they have in the past, about doing something with the motel. Until then, it sits.

  TIMELINE

  July 4, 1892 A.G. Gaston is born.

  1939 Booker T. Washington Business School opens.

  June 1948 Kiddieland opens.

  August 1951 A.G. and Minnie Gaston attend the Methodist conference in Oxford, England.

  May 17, 1954 Brown v. Board of Education

  June 22–27, 1954 Sunday school convention.

  July 1, 1954 Gaston Motel officially opens.

  1955 Fred Shuttlesworth leads a petition to demand the city hire its first black policeman.

  August 28, 1955 Emmett Till is lynched.

  1956 Autherine Lucy is admitted to the University of Alabama.

  May 20, 1956 Officers padlock the door to the NAACP office.

  June 4, 1956 Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights is founded.

  1956 Monday mass meetings begin.

  September 2, 1957 Judge Edward Aaron is kidnapped and castrated by the Ku Klux Klan.

  1957 Paul R. Jones leases his restaurant at the motel.

  1958 Alexander Long begins working as night manager of the motel.

  1959 Kirkwood Balton is chosen to oversee operations at the motel.

  February 1962 The Miles College selective buying campaign commences.

  1962 The $1.5 million A.G. Gaston Building opens.

  August 25, 1962 Colin Powell and his wife, Alma, spend their honeymoon at the motel.

  September 25–28, 1962 SCLC convention is held in Birmingham.

  1962 The Smith and Gaston Funeral home moves.

  1962 Townsend opens its Gulf service station.

  1962 Paul Jones leaves the motel.

  January 1963 Ernest and Carolyn Gibson begin to manage the motel.

  1963 Outgoing Alabama governor John Patterson appoints Gaston to the Tuskegee Board of Trustees.

  March 15–17, 1963 The Links, Inc. hosts its Southern Area Links gathering.

  April 16, 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. writes “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

  May 12, 1963 The motel is bombed.

  May 15, 1963 The KKK burns two twenty-foot crosses in retaliation of the integration order.

  May 18, 1963 Floyd Patterson and Jackie Robinson come to Birmingham to encourage nonviolence.

  June 12, 1963 Medgar Evers is murdered.

  September 15, 1963 The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church is bombed and four little girls are killed.

  1964 The Gibsons leave Birmingham.

  1964 The Cool Strings begin performing at the lounge.

  1970s Black professionals like Black Alabama Power Company associates congregate at the motel.

  December 24, 1971 Marvin and Brenda Jones hold their wedding reception at the motel.

  1983 The motel is converted into rental properties for the elderly and handicapped.

  2003 Birmingham Civil Rights Institute plans for the motel are shelved.

  2007 A St. Louis developer has a proposal for a $40 million project.

  2012 Mayor William Bell appoints a construction firm to evaluate the redevelopment of the motel.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER 1

  1. Bham Wiki, “Kiddieland Park,” www.bhamwiki.com/w/Kiddieland.

  2. Birmingham News, “Kiddieland, Avondale Park Concert Turn Meccas for 32,000 Persons,” June 1948.

  3. Birmingham’s Racial Segregation Ordinances, xroads.virginia.edu/~public/civilrights/ordinances.html.

  4. According to Pamela Sterne-King, professor of history at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

  5. Jenkins and Hines, Black Titan, 38.

  6. Birmingham Historical Society newsletter, November 20
12.

  7. Bham Wiki, “Collegeville,” www.bhamwiki.com/w/Collegeville.

  8. From an interview with Hattie Bryant, Urban Impact, a group that serves the interests of the historic black business district.

  9. Bham Wiki, “Pythian Temple,” www.bhamwiki.com/w/Pythian_Temple.

  10. Bham Wiki, “Little Savoy Café,” www.bhamwiki.com/w/Little_Savoy_Cafe.

  11. Young, Easy Burden, 206.

  12. Jenkins and Hines, Black Titan, 4.

  13. Ibid., 141.

  14. Ibid., 18.

  15. Gaston, Green Power, 17.

  16. Jenkins and Hines, Black Titan, 59.

  17. Ibid., 35.

  18. Ibid., 71.

  19. Ibid., 72.

  20. Ibid., 76.

  21. Ibid., 78.

  22. Gaston, Green Power, 60.

  23. Jenkins and Hines, Black Titan, 132.

  24. Ibid., 155.

  25. Ibid., 156.

  26. Ibid., 157.

  27. Ibid., 51.

  CHAPTER 2

  28. Gaston, Green Power, 86.

  29. Jenkins and Hines, Black Titan, 158.

  30. Gaston, Green Power, 86.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Jenkins and Hines, Black Titan, 87.

  33. Gaston, Green Power, 88.

  34. Ibid., 91.

  35. Ibid., 90.

  36. Ibid., 88.

  37. Jenkins and Hines, Black Titan, 160–61.

  38. Young, Easy Burden, 229.

  39. The Negro Traveler’s Green Book (Spring 1956).

  40. Gaston, Green Power, 93.

  41. Ibid., 92.

  42. Ibid., 93.

  43. Ibid., 94.

  44. Jenkins and Hines, Black Titan, 163.

  45. Gaston, Green Power, 93.

  46. Eskew, “Classes and the Masses,” 37.

  CHAPTER 3

  47. Jenkins and Hines, Black Titan, 120.

  48. Ibid., 168.

  49. White and Manis, Birmingham Revolutionaries, 34.

  50. Fallin, African American Church, 146.