Books: Excerpt from Marie Sutton’s ‘The A.G. Gaston Motel in Birmingham’
Saturday, January 3, 2015 by Wade Kwon
The following chapter is an excerpt from Birmingham author Marie Sutton’s “The A.G. Gaston Motel in Birmingham” [aff. link]. She is a writer with a passion for immortalizing the African-American experience, married to the Rev. James Sutton with two children, Simone and Stephen.
In this excerpt, Sutton shares the history of segregated Birmingham and the rise of entrepreneur A.G. Gaston.
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Locked Out, but Creating a New Way
“I couldn’t understand why the color of your skin made you better than me. That didn’t make sense.”
— Brenda Faush, a native of Birmingham
Alabama’s scorching summer days do not discriminate. Beneath the merciless sun, there is neither black nor white, rich nor poor — the warmth oppresses all. From the pristine streets of Mountain Brook to the dusty roads of Acipco-Finley, the thick, humid air can be suffocating and the pavement like hot lava.
If your skin is brown, however, it doesn’t take long for a million little reminders — like needle-thin icicles — to prick you back into reality; not even the indiscriminate Alabama heat can thaw out cold hearts or melt away the blistering, blue knuckle winter of segregation.
During the 1950s — in the sweltering June, July and August months — a Negro child had to still any excitement at the sight of Kiddieland Park. Riding along the endless stretch of Third Avenue West in Birmingham, the fairgrounds could be spotted from the road. The smell of salty, buttered popcorn and sweet, airy cotton candy was a seductive lure. The bright, colorful Ferris wheel sliced through the skyline, and the grounds danced with spinning boxcars, mock airplane rides and a merry-go-round.
Kiddieland was an annual summer carnival that was created in June 1948 for area children. Described by the Birmingham News as a “miniature Fairyland,” it was touted as “welcome to all,” though it was understood that that meant everyone except Negroes. The fair featured Sunday concerts, “hillbilly” shows, a “pint-sized edition of the Southern Railway’s Southerner” train and advertisements that showed rosy-cheeked children drunk with glee. It was not until years later that blacks were allowed to come, but only on the last day when the stuffed toys were usually picked over and nearly gone; the vendors were packing up and the popcorn stale.
Ask a room full of blacks who grew up in Birmingham during that time, and only a scant few won’t mention how their memories were stained by not being allowed to attend the fair.
“I remember looking over there and knowing that I couldn’t go and not quite understanding why,” remembered Samuetta Hill Drew, who was a colored child in Birmingham during the 1950s.
Tamara Harris Johnson’s parents tried to shield her from the Kiddieland discussion, she said. Even though the street on which the fair sat was a main artery to downtown, her parents, and many others, found alternate routes so as not to explain why admission to the fair was more than a dime. It also required that your skin be white.
That was the way it was in Birmingham. If you were black, you were only given access to scraps of the American dream, the torn and tattered pieces, the chewed up and spit out ones. Jim Crow laws made sure of it.
City ordinances deemed it illegal for blacks and whites to play cards together or even enjoy movies collectively unless there was separate seating, entrances and exits. And the only way they could eat in the same room was if they were divided by a solid partition that reached at least 7 feet from the floor. Signs that read “whites only” hung on doorways and water fountains throughout the city. Even the telephone directories noted whether people or businesses were “C” or “Colored.”
Continued »
