Blog

Nov 05, 2023

Before A&T Four, Greensboro Six broke color line

The “Greensboro Six” are pictured shortly after their arrest on Dec. 7, 1955, for attempting to integrate the public Gillespie Golf Course in Greensboro. From left are Phillip Cooke, Samuel Murray,

The “Greensboro Six” are pictured shortly after their arrest on Dec. 7, 1955, for attempting to integrate the public Gillespie Golf Course in Greensboro. From left are Phillip Cooke, Samuel Murray, Elijah Herring, Joseph Studivent, George Simkins Jr. and Leon Wolfe.

Dr. George Simkins Jr.'s family members and city officials pose for photos at the memorial dedication at Gillespie Golf Course in Greensboro on Wednesday.

Chris Simkins, son of Dr. George Simkins Jr., looks at the “Greensboro 6” memorial dedication at Gillespie Golf Course in Greensboro on Wednesday.

Dr. George Simkins Jr.’s family have their photo made at the “Greensboro 6” memorial dedication at Gillespie Golf Course in Greensboro on Wednesday.

Dr. George Simkins Jr.’s family and friends have their photo made at the “Greensboro 6” memorial dedication at Gillespie Golf Course in Greensboro, N.C., on Wednesday, August 23, 2023.

GREENSBORO — A fight for equality. A raging fire. A civil rights legend in the making.

Four years before the A&T Four sat down at the Woolworth's lunch counter and sparked the 1960 sit-in movement, six Black men set a precedent when they teed up on one of Greensboro's whites-only courses.

Phillip Cooke, Samuel Murray, Elijah Herring, Joseph Studivent, Leon Wolfe and Dr. George Simkins had a message to send: They were more than ready to receive the rights they were due.

Last week, local leaders, community members and Simkins' descendants gathered at the city's Gillespie Park Golf Course for a ceremony along with a representative from the state NC African American Heritage Commission. The purpose was to unveil a new North Carolina Civil Rights Trail marker honoring their act of civil disobedience, which helped pave the way for the course's eventual integration.

Robert Langenfeld, a now-retired UNCG English professor, first heard about the story of the Greensboro Six from Black men he got to know while hitting golf balls at the park. That led Langenfeld, who is white, to research the Greensboro Six, donate a plaque for the site and ultimately write a proposal for the marker.

Celebrating the Greensboro Six and seeing the mix of players of different races now enjoying the course is a source of joy for Chris Simkins, the son of George Simkins. In December 1955, the elder Simkins was a 31-year-old dentist, husband and father of one baby daughter. That's Chris' older sister, who now lives in Atlanta.

"My mom was home with a little baby, dealing with a husband getting arrested for playing golf on a public course," Jeanne Simkins Hollis said last week while attending the event.

Prior to his arrest, Simkins had been golfing at Nocho Park, which the city had set up as a place for Black people to play following complaints about the segregation of the white courses.

"My father would tell me stories about playing at Nocho Park, and they weren't so nice always," Chris Simkins said. "The fairways were crowded with weeds and rocks. The greens were bare and just really overgrown. None of the golfers really liked playing there."

Meanwhile, their tax dollars also were going toward paying for the city's whites-only courses, including the pristine Gillespie Park.

"We tried to get them to fix up Nocho, and they never would do it, yet they were slipping out and fixing up Gillespie," George Simkins recalled in a 1997 oral history interview.

Simkins pulled together a group of friends, including men he golfed with at Nocho and one of his dental patients, and on Dec. 7, 1955, the six Black men showed up to the Gillespie Park Golf Course to play.

"It wasn't long before a white irate golf pro caught up with them on the course and said to 'get out of here,'" Chris said. "My father told him: 'We're here for a cause.'"

"What damn cause?" the pro asked.

Simkins replied: "The cause of democracy."

Later that evening, the six were arrested and charged with trespassing. That was the start of years of legal battles.

In spring 1957, federal District Judge Judge Johnson Hayes ruled in favor of their request for an order forbidding racial discrimination in the operation of the golf course.

"This public right can not be abridged by the lessee so long as the course is available to some of the citizens as a public park; it can not be lawfully denied to others solely on account of race," Johnson wrote in his decision.

On June 23, 1957, just four days before that ruling was to go into effect, and six days before a federal appeals court upheld that ruling, the clubhouse caught fire.

The blaze destroyed a large part of the pro shop, according to a news account at the time.

In the oral history interview, George Simkins called the incident, "mysterious."

Citing damage from the fire, the city shuttered the course and later sold part of the property.

"It also closed the course at Nocho Park," Chris Simkins said. "So not many people around here were playing golf."

Meanwhile, the fight over whether the men would have to serve a jail sentence was ongoing. It went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1960.

The men lost their case 5-4, but avoided going to jail because Gov. Luther Hodges commuted their sentences and ordered them to pay a fine instead, according to the book "Game of Privilege" by Lane Demas.

It wasn't until 1962 that the City Council finally voted to open the course to all residents.

"It was a big deal in my house," daughter Jeanne Simkins Hollis remembered.

At that 1962 reopening, George Simkins was the first to tee off.

Though the golf course fight was his first foray into civil rights activism, it was far from the last. The action was a springboard for Simkins, who went on to lead the Greensboro NAACP and play huge roles in the fights to integrate swimming pools, tennis courses and Greensboro's hospitals, which became nationally significant.

"Having lived their entire lives in the grips of segregation, the Greensboro Six rejoiced that they had struck a blow for the very equal access and justice that this U.S. Constitution guarantees," Chris Simkins said. "So let this civil rights marker stand as a spotlight for generations who will play golf here or visit to learn more about a significant piece of American history."

[email protected]

336-373-7002

@JessiePounds

​

Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter.

K12 Schools Reporter

A city that has its share of landmarks focused on the battle for civil rights in the 1950s will have another marker in about a year when a mur…

A look at the memorable moments and visionary voices that helped stitch the area’s social tapestry.