BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) -- CBS 42 celebrates the legacy of A.G. Gaston as it honors Black History Month.
Alabama's first Black millionaire was born Arthur George Gaston in 1892. He bult an economic empire that included an insurance company, a bank, funeral home, motel, a construction company, radio stations and a Boys & Girls Club bearing his name.
Bob Dickerson is putting his legacy to work with the A.G. Gaston Conference. Now in its 21st year, it not only honors the legacy of Gaston but teaches the methods of a man who built an empire simply meeting the needs of others.
Inside Birmingham's Innovation Depot, you'll find the Birmingham Business Resource Center, where a painting of Gaston looms large in the office of executive director Bob Dickerson, who once worked for Gaston.
"I admired him long before I ever got a job working for him," Dickerson said.
Dickerson was vice president of Gaston's Citizens Federal Savings Bank. He's the co-founder of the A.G. Gaston Economic Empowerment Conference that helps Black businesses succeed. He got the idea to do the conference in 1996, the year Gaston died.
"I think it was because I didn't see enough happening to honor him," Dickerson said. "I just felt like his life and his accomplishments were so remarkable that the city of Birmingham should have named everything after him."
For Dickerson, it's also important that people learn about who Gaston was as a man at the conference.
Gaston, when he was born during the height of Jim Crow, had a better chance of being lynched than he had to become a multi-millionaire, a big employer and to do the things he did. He flourished during a time when there wasn't integration, there wasn't the signing of the civil rights bills and laws. There was still overt segregation.
He overcame all of that, and in a lot of ways, he flourished because of it. He found needs and filled them in his community.
It's in that same spirit that Naimah Elmore opened Alicia's Coffee inside the A.G. Gaston Motel.
"It's more than coffee that we serve," Elmore said. "We try to connect. It's about bringing resources back to areas that's limited."
"It's definitely an honor to be operating inside the A.G. Gaston Motel when you know the history and why it was created," Elmore continued. "It was created so Black people during the civil rights movement could have fine dining -- somewhere to just rest."
Gaston lived to be 103 years old. He'd seen a lot, earned a lot and left a legacy of wealth building for generations to follow. The young Gaston left school after the 10th grade and enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War I. He would later take a job at the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company in Fairfield, where his entrepreneurial spirit kicked in.
First, he sold lunches to his fellow miners. Then he used money from that business to start lending to his co-workers, earning interest on the loans while also selling peanuts, digging holes and painting box cars for income.
By 1923, he had founded the Booker T. Washington Company with $500. Later that year, Gaston opened a funeral home. His business holdings included several businesses, among them a chain of insurance companies, radio station and the Citizens Federal Savings Bank, the largest Black-owned business in downtown Birmingham.
During the height of the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Blacks and whites considered Gaston to be cautious and moderate. He's the one who posted bail $5,000 bail for Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy after the two civil rights leaders had been jailed for marching without a permit in 1963.
Gaston sold his insurance company in 1987 and worked at his bank until six months before his death on January 19, 1996. At the time, his estimated net worth was $130 million.
"A.G. Gaston understood two things," Dickerson said. "He understood the power of being on the inside, and then he understood the power of bringing influence to the conversation."
During his time, Gaston was the largest Black employer in Alabama.
"Cities paid tax dollars to recruit companies that create a hundred jobs, and he was creating a hundred, maybe hundreds of jobs, with the thing that he was doing with Booker T. Washington, the bank, with the radio station, with the cemetery, with the construction company and all of those things coming together to really be a significant engine of job creation in the community," Dickerson said.
Something he hopes attendees take away from the A.G. Gaston Conference.
"So he was what we want our businesses to be today: major employers," Dickerson said. "It's one of those things when you look at Black businesses across the country, the large overwhelming percentage of our businesses don't have a significant number of employees. You think about Gaston's companies that at any time could have had 100 people working for him. That was huge."
The sold-out A.G. Gaston Conference will be held at the Red Mountain Theatre on Tuesday.