WCP: "A. G. Gaston: Black Titan"

Arthur George Gaston (July 4, 1892 -- January 19, 1996) was a businessman who established a number of businesses in Birmingham, Alabama, and who played a significant role in the struggle to integrate Birmingham in 1963. About the book: 

While working in the mines, he hit on the plan of selling lunches to his fellow miners and then branched into loaning money to them at twenty-five percent interest. It was also while working in the mines that he conceived of the idea of offering burial insurance to co-workers. He had noticed that mine widows would come to the mines and to local churches to collect donations in order to bury their husbands and he wondered if people would "give a few dimes into a burial society to bury their dead". As a result, Gaston formed the Booker T. Washington Burial Society, which later became the Booker T. Washington Insurance Company.