July 4, 1892

A true bootstrap businessman, Arthur George Gaston rose from nothing to a $40 million business empire. Born in Demopolis on this day in 1892, Gaston moved to Birmingham as a teenager and dropped out of school after the tenth grade to go to work. After a stint in the Army in World War I, Gaston returned from Europe to found an insurance company, a funeral business, a business college, a real estate company, radio stations, and Citizens Federal Savings and Loan. He passed away in 1996, at the age of 103.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Demopolis native A. G. Gaston (1892-1996) was a successful Birmingham businessman with a wide range of interests including banking, construction, funeral services, and real estate. Gaston was a key figure during the civil rights movement in Birmingham, supporting activists’ efforts financially while receiving criticism for being an accommodationist. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Birmingham Public Library)

Entrepreneur A. G. Gaston opened the Booker T. Washington Business School in Birmingham in 1939 in response to a shortage of clerks and typists for his funeral home and insurance businesses. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute)

Promotional material for the state-wide spelling bee founded by Birmingham businessman A. G. Gaston in 1953 to encourage academic improvement. By 1965 every school in the city participated in the bee. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute)

A.G. Gaston Motel, Birmingham, 2010. (The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.