The Birmingham Times
Frank E. Adams Jr. is out as CEO of the A.G. Gaston Boys and Girls Club Inc. (AGGBGC). Adams, who took the reins of the organization in 2012, was no longer CEO following a board meeting on Thursday, according to sources.
Adams grew up in the Bush Hills neighborhood in West Birmingham, and first joined (AGGBGC) in 1983 where “I learned to swim, worked with arts and crafts, got help with homework, and socialized. I also learned that football was not for me,” Adams told the Birmingham Times in a 2017 interview.
Adams hails from a family of talent and achievers.
His father, the late Frank E. Adams Sr., was a well-known musician and teacher in Birmingham. The Smithfield native, who played clarinet and saxophone with jazz greats Duke Ellington and Sun Ra, was inducted into the inaugural class of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.
His mother, Doris, a native of Rosedale in Homewood, was the first African-American teacher at Crumley Chapel Elementary School, located in an unincorporated town northwest of Birmingham. At one point she was a featured vocalist in her husband’s band.
And his uncle, Oscar Adams Jr., was a prominent civil rights lawyer who went on to an appointment on the Alabama Supreme Court in 1980. He later won the seat outright and became the first African-American to win statewide constitutional public office in Alabama.
Frank Jr. attended Woodrow Wilson Elementary School and the Alabama School of Fine Arts. After graduating in 1990, he studied clarinet at Boston University, and completed an undergraduate degree in business administration and art performance. He later earned a master’s degree in fine arts management at the school.
In 1999, Adams was appointed to fill the Birmingham City Council District 8 seat left vacant when Bernard Kincaid was elected mayor. He sought to keep the seat in the 2000 Birmingham City Council special election but lost to Lee Loder.
This story is developing.
