Gaston, Arthur George "A.G."

Impact on the world

Starting a burial society among fellow coal miners in 1923 with 25-cent weekly dues, Gaston built the Booker T. Washington Insurance Company and Smith & Gaston Funeral Home into anchors of a diversified enterprise that by the 1950s included Citizens Federal Savings and Loan (Birmingham's first Black-owned bank in over 40 years), a construction firm, and a business college training Black workers for the insurance and funeral industries. During the pivotal 1963 Birmingham campaign, his A.G. Gaston Motel served as headquarters for Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference — King was staying there when it was bombed by white supremacists — and Gaston personally posted bail for jailed protesters and provided free lodging to movement leaders, even while publicly favoring negotiation over confrontation and drawing criticism from more militant activists who called him a “super Uncle Tom.” His hotel is now preserved as part of the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, established by President Obama in 2017.

Life & background

Born July 4, 1892, in Demopolis, Alabama, the grandson of enslaved people, Gaston was raised by his grandparents Joe and Idella Gaston after his father's early death, receiving only a 10th-grade education at the Tuggle Institute after his mother, a cook, moved him to Birmingham in 1905. He served in France during World War I, then worked in the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company's mines, where he began lending money to coworkers at interest and selling discounted lunches before founding his burial society; he survived a 1976 kidnapping attempt at age 83 and a firebombing of his home during the civil rights era. He sold his insurance company in 1987 but continued working at his bank until six months before his death on January 19, 1996, in Birmingham, at age 103, with a net worth estimated above $130 million.

Sources

1. Encyclopedia of Alabama; BlackPast.org; NPR