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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview R-0018, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Greensboro dentist George Simkins attended Meharry Dental College in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1944 to 1948, when only two dental schools accepted black students. He assumed that segregation would continue, but soon set about trying to undo it: he fought segregation at a local golf course but again lost the case before the Supreme Court, this time on a technicality; he sought to desegregate a swimming pool; and in what may have been his most significant civil rights achievement, he built a case against segregation in two Greensboro hospitals. The Supreme Court decided Simkins v. Moses H. Cone Community Hospital in the plaintiffs' favor, ending the legal segregation of medical care. In this interview, he describes his various civil rights efforts and the responses of his white opponents, who resisted desegregation by fighting it in court as well as with harassment and threats. While Simkins won a major civil rights victory in the early 1960s, he sees a return of segregation in public schools, and a lack of sympathy for civil rights among political and judicial leaders. This interview will provide researchers with insights into a motivated individual's efforts to undo segregation and the hostile response of the white community, a response that continues to resonate today.
Dentist George Simkins describes his efforts to desegregate hospitals and other facilities in Greensboro, NC.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Dr. Simkins, maybe you could give some of your background—your education, and when you started practicing in Greensboro?
I was born here in Greensboro, in fact I was born here in this house I live in. I attended the elementary schools here in Greensboro, and Dudley High School. I went to Herzel Junior College in Chicago for two years, 1941 and '42, and went to Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama in '43 and '44, and to Meharry Dental College in Nashville, Tennessee, '44 to '48. I interned at Jersey City Medical Center from '48 to '49, and I've been back here in Greensboro ever since. I worked at the Health Department for about five years in public health dentistry. We had a trailer, and we would go from school to school, doing fillings, profies and extractions. That was '49 to '54. I started private practice in '55, and have been practicing general dentistry ever since. I'm still practicing.
When you entered dentistry in 1949, what was your sense of the opportunities that were available for African-American health professionals? Did it seem like there were more opportunities opening up than there had been before?
At that time, there were two dental schools that accepted blacks, Meharry and Howard, in Washington, DC. Some of the Northern schools would accept blacks, but no dental school in the South. There weren't many opportunities at that time.
Were you aware of any attempts to encourage Southern schools to admit black students at that time, or was it accepted that those two schools would be the main places?
At that time, everything was "separate but equal." I had no idea that these schools would later be integrated, because I thought it was going to stay the same.
By the time the [Simkins v. Cone] case arose in 1962, why do you think you and the other plaintiffs chose that route to try to open access for blacks to better health care. Were there other options that you thought about at the time, or was a lawsuit agreed on as the best way to go about it?
We first wrote letters to Moses Cone and Wesley Long Hospitals, asking
them to admit black physicians and dentists on their staff. We just got
the run-around on that. We wrote several letters, and they just denied
us. After so many denials, it started like this. A patient came in my
office, I think his name was Donald Lines, he was a student at A
& T. He had a temperature of 103, and his jaw was swollen. I
knew right then that this boy needed to be in the hospital, where he
could get some attention. I called the black hospital, which was L.
Richardson, and they told me they could not admit
So they didn't even have separate wards, they were both completely white hospitals?
Wesley Long wouldn't accept you at all. Cone had a policy where if it
was something that L. Richardson did not have, they would accept the
patient, but he would lose his doctor—he would have to get a white
doctor who was on the staff there to work on him. This case was nothing
that L. Richardson couldn't handle, if they had room. The boy needed to
be on antibiotics and hospitalized, but Cone would not accept him. So at
that point, I called Jack Greenberg, who was the head of the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund out of New York. I told Jack, "We really
need to do something about these hospitals. They will not accept any
black patient, and if Cone accepts them, they lose their doctor." He
said, "George, if you can organize the black physicians, I will see what
I can do." At this point, I knew that some of the younger fellows wanted
to open up these hospitals, and some of the older fellows didn't. One of
the reasons some of the older fellows didn't want to was because
everybody was operating at L. Richardson. Whether you were qualified or
not, you could operate over there. These fellows didn't want to lose
their income from operating, and they knew if they had been admitting to
Cone and Wesley Long, they would have to be board certified to do any
operations, so they weren't too much for it. They also figured that if
you opened up Cone and Wesley Long, it would hurt L. Richardson.
Patients would stop going to L. Richardson. I went around with a
petition, and got guys that I knew who would sign up—I put their names
on there first. Then I would approach the older fellows, and those that
were reluctant, when they saw all the younger fellows down there, some
of them signed, and some of them wouldn't sign. So I got about 11
plaintiffs in all, some patients, the majority of dentists. Then Jack
asked me to see if either of these hospitals had been built with federal
Hill-Burton funds, because that was the way we had to go in court. If
they had not been built with Hill-Burton funds, there was nothing we
could do to open them up, because they were strictly private hospitals.
I was elated to find that both hospitals had been built with Hill-Burton
funds, and we preceded to attack them at that point, on the grounds that
they had been built with Hill-Burton funds. I went around and got 50
dollars from each [plaintiff], so they could pay for the expense of the
suit. I sent that to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and
we hired a local lawyer. He never would file suit after we had done all
the work, so I called Jack, and said, "Jack, I think we've got a scared
lawyer on our hands. We need to get this thing filed." Because it was
months and months, and it never was filed. He understood, and said he'd
take care of it. So he called Conrad Pearson, who
That's interesting that the first lawyer was so intimidated. I wonder why he accepted the case at all?
I did too. But I guess the more he thought about it, he just didn't want to take any chance. At that particular time, it was hard to get any black lawyers to do anything in civil rights.
Was there fear of violence, or professional problems?
They feared that the courts would not look favorably upon them, and they just didn't want to risk their profession on cases that were not popular.
It sounds like you had known Jack Greenberg previous to when you filed the suit. What was your relationship with him? Were you active in the NAACP?
I had gotten involved in civil rights on December 7, 1955. The city had two golf courses. One was Gillespie, and the other was Nocho 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. Of course, Gillespie was for whites, and Nocho was for blacks. The city leased Gillespie for a dollar to a white group, one of whom was chairman of the Greensboro Parks and Recreation Department, to keep blacks off of it. He set up rules that you had to be a member, or the invited guest of a member, to play out there.
So he turned it into a private club, basically.
Basically, but it really wasn't, because any white person could go out there, pay their money and play. But they told us that it was a private club.
I'm surprised there was a public golf course for blacks at all.
There was. We had a little nine-hole course out there. Six of us one
Wednesday afternoon when I was off, we went out there to play. They
arrested us for trespassing. We put our money down. They had the black
policeman to come by that night and take us to jail. My father, who was
a dentist, went our bail. We were found guilty in city court, and we
appealed it to the next level. In the meantime, we went into federal
court and got a declaratory judgment, and the federal judge was Johnson
J. Hayes. He said that anybody who pays taxes and has to go out and
fight for this country ought to be able to enjoy the recreational
facilities provided by the city, and said as far as he was
So this case went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States?
Yes, this was our golf case. Warren gave such a strong dissenting opinion that Luther Hodges, who was governor at the time, commuted our sentences. We had to pay a fine, and didn't go to jail. But that's how I had contact with Thurgood Marshall and Jack Greenberg and the lawyers at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
I didn't know golfing could be so dangerous!
Everything was dangerous back then. Anything you tried to integrate was.
After the golf case, did you participate in any other civil rights activity before the hospital case?
We went to the swimming pool, and said, if you're not going to let us
play golf, maybe you'll let us swim. So they had a swimming pool that
was two years old, and we sent somebody out. They immediately closed it
and made it for members only. They got mad and shut down the black pool
at Nocho. The city said they were getting out of the recreational
business, and they tried to sell Nocho Park swimming pool. They had just
paid 250 thousand dollars for the white swimming pool, and they let it
go for about 60. The man who bidded on it was from Mount Airy, and he
was the wrong person, because they wanted somebody in the city to have
it. They told him if he got it, they weren't going to zone it right for
him, and he wouldn't be allowed to make
Why didn't the city want the first guy to buy it?
Because he wasn't the right person to own it. They wanted somebody from within the city of Greensboro.
So he was an outsider.
That's right.
You said that some of the older black doctors were reluctant to try to integrate facilities. I've heard in some places that as there were new, increasingly high-tech facilities being built, do you think that a hospital like Richardson would have continued operating even if the other two hospitals hadn't been integrated?
Yeah, definitely. Because the demand was there.
It was kind of a sure thing for them?
Blacks didn't have noplace to go but L. Richardson. There was a great demand for L. Richardson. No other hospital had a waiting list like that around here. With the large population in Greensboro, they were set. You knew it was an inferior facility, but at that point, there was nothing you could do.
Because from what I've looked at, the gap between hospitals like Richardson and the newer white hospitals just kept getting bigger and bigger in terms of equipment and things like that.
Oh, yes.
Were a lot of black health professional community leaders, or did they take on any role outside being strictly doctors or dentists? Or did it depend on the individual?
Some of them were on the Board of Education, some were on the Jury Commission, they took other roles. One of them was the first black on the City Council. They took part in the community, but none of them really pressed to get in these hospitals. It was because they were operating in L. Richardson, whether they were qualified or not. They didn't want to give that up.
The state didn't try to pass any kind of regulations governing those hospitals?
Back then, the state was part of the cause! They were segregating just like anybody else.
But it sounds like they had different standards, like you said doctors had to be board certified to operate.
At Cone Hospital, but they didn't care [at Richardson].
Do you know of any organized effort in Greensboro to build another black hospital? For instance, use Hill-Burton funds to either improve Richardson or build a new hospital?
L. Richardson built a new hospital, I couldn't tell you when, but Vinkel bought it out. They have it now.
According to the Hill-Burton Act, they were supposed to administer funds equally, even if the facilities were separate, but my guess is that not as many black facilities got funding, but I don't know for sure.
That's probably rights.
It would seem that even if the doctors wanted to keep a monopoly on one hospital, they might still try to get funds to improve it from Hill-Burton. So you say they did?
They built a new hospital.
Once the lawsuit was decided, how did it work out in practical terms? How long was it before you could actually go to Moses Cone Hospital and admit a patient there?
They invited the doctors who were not plaintiffs in the case to join. Those of us that were plaintiffs were the last ones to become members of the staff. One of the white doctors came to the office and told me, "George, there's a lot of difference between Cone and Wesley Long. In Wesley Long, you're probably going to have to have federal troops to get in there." Sure enough, they resisted and resisted. But finally, after six or seven months, they sent us applications and acted on them, and admitted us at Cone. At Wesley Long, I never was able to get in. They told me that I would have to be board certified as an oral surgeon to get in. I said, "To hell with it," I didn't even try.
Would that have required membership in the state medical or dental society? I've run into some cases where in order to be certified, you had to be a member of the state medical society, which didn't admit blacks.
That went on also, but you had to be trained in oral surgery, and have a board [certification] in it to join Wesley Long, so they said. None of us had our board in oral surgery, even though we did oral surgery. They denied the dentists on that grounds.
So you would have had to find somewhere else that accepted blacks, and get that training, in addition to the training you already had, in order to get the board certification.
Yes.
So you probably would have had to go outside the South, unless you went to Meharry or Howard.
Carolina, as far as I know, did not accept the first black in the dental school for 25 years.
So Long required board certification, but Cone didn't?
You could be on the staff at Cone without being board certified.
So they basically used that as a loophole. How about the patients? Did those two hospitals begin to regularly accept black patients after that?
I can only answer for Cone. Cone did, because they had accepted black patients before, but you had to change your doctor, and it had to be something that L. Richardson could not handle. Wesley Long had never accepted any blacks. They started to after that—Wesley Long I think took a longer period of time, but they did.
I know for a lot of black patients, finances would have been a serious obstacle to getting better care, especially before Medicaid.
But even if you had money, they would not accept you. You've got college professors over here with higher income, but it didn't matter how much money you had.
But after 1963, they could get in?
Right.
I'd be interested in finding out what the admission policies were, whether you had to have insurance, or put down a downpayment. As far as the long term effects of this case—obviously, physicians and patients can now use the hospital without regard to race. Do you see any other, more subtle obstacles that still exist, even after the case was decided?
Now you're going to have to talk to somebody who is directly involved. I never did use the hospital much. I was on the staff for a while, and I would take some of my fracture cases to L. Richardson, but have operated in the operating room [at Moses Cone]. These physicians could tell you, because they're constantly using the hospital.
You mentioned that some lawyers were hesitant to get involved in civil rights cases. Did you ever suffer any repercussions from this case? Did anyone give you trouble afterward?
I was president of the [Greensboro chapter of the] NAACP for 25 years here. I brought suit against the schools, the golf courses, the hospitals, the swimming pools and everything. I was constantly getting threats. At one point, we filed a suit to integrate Longview Golf Course. They would send a fleet of cabs here to pick up my party. They said it was my wife's birthday, and dozens of roses and new cars would be charged to me.
Who was doing that?
That right wing group out in California, I think it was the John Birch
Society. I would answer the phone, and I wouldn't even say hello, I
would just say, "I did not order anything." The phone was just ringing.
You can't imagine all the stuff that they ordered, all to be charged
here. Some of the guys got mad, because they said, "They're trying to
hurt you, but they're hurting us." They would put me through all sorts
of things like that. You find out that they use various governmental
agencies like the IRS. When school integration was to take effect, one
man called me and said, "If anything happens to my daughter, you are
dead. Because we're going to kill you." It's like I'm going to have
He sued you for the $7,700 he owed you?
He sued me because the contractor had held back the $7,700 so that I could get my money back. The judge said, "I want the jury to answer three questions. Did Kabotnik have a contract with Simkins?" We'd made copies and showed each member of the jury the contract, so the jury said yes. "Did Kabotnik renege on the contract with Simkins" The jury said yes. "How much money should Simkins get?" The jury said zip. The judge said, "Wait a minute. This is not right." This was about quarter of five in the afternoon. "You all are going to come back tomorrow and rule on this thing, and answer these questions correctly." So they came back the next morning, and the first question, "Did Kabotnik have a contract with Simkins?" the jury said no. The judge threw the case out. So I said the hell with it, and just gave him the money, and I wasn't going back in court. But I have had a bad experience in court, I'm sure because of my civil rights activity. This case was much later than the hospital case, in the '70s.
As someone who's real active in the civil rights movement, a lot of people have said that health care just wasn't a major concern, especially at first. Education was really the primary focus.
Integrating the schools. That's true.
Why do you think that was so? Because earlier, in the '30s and '40s, it seems like health care had been a very important issue, and there was a lot of activism and philanthropies going out. It seems to have somewhat faded by the late '40s, and I was wondering if you could suggest why that was?
They were just concentrating on the schools. If they could get the schools desegregated, some of the other stuff would follow. These segregated schools, where you were educating people—or half educating them, or not educating them at all, really—it would be better to get the schools first, then concentrate on other things like recreation and hospitals. They had filed the Brown suit years ago.
Do you think that people thought that desegregating hospitals would be more difficult than desegregating schools?
I don't think they even gave it a thought.
Like you said earlier, those two hospitals had to have been receiving Hill-Burton funds for the case to have a chance, so before a lot of federal involvement. . .
At that point, we didn't even know what Hill-Burton funds were. We had no idea, we just never thought about integrating these hospitals. All the doctors were happy—they were operating, and they had all the patients they wanted, and the income was good. They weren't really interested in integrating the hospitals.
So it sounds like for a long time, black physicians had admitting rights only at black hospitals, and had a place for themselves there. Why do you think the younger physicians started challenging that? Why weren't they content to continue the way things had been?
They had been trained better than the older physicians. A lot of them had gone to integrated hospitals throughout the country to do their interns and residents. Some of them were board members.
So for the younger ones, there were some improvements in training opportunities?
Oh, yeah. When they came here, some of them were already board members. None of these older fellows were board certified. I got involved because I had been treated so badly with this golf case. I had never seen anything like it in my life. They would get up and lie. Two members of the jury in the golf case, we put them on the stand. They were trying to find out whether we were guilty or not, but we put them on the stand, because we saw their name on the roster of people who had played at the golf course. We asked them, "Are you a member?" They said no. "Were you the invited guest of a member?" No. They paid their money just like we did. Yet they found us guilty of trespassing. I was just incensed. I'd never been in court before, and this was a new experience. The judges and the solicitor were laughing, and they were treating you just like you were not human.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
So I was fighting for equal rights, and trying to open up some of this stuff. I guess I've paid a price, too.
What kind of things do you think still need to be done? What do you think activism in the future will address?
I think now, you're still fighting for things you fought for 30 and 40 years ago. These schools, for instance. People are talking about neighborhood schools now, and going back to segregation. A lot of blacks want neighborhood schools, because they claim it's unfair for their kids to be bused all the way to a white school, and a lot of the white teachers are not treating them the way they should. Some of them are segregated in the classroom. It's not good. I talked to a federal judge about a month ago, and he said there's more segregation in the schools now than there was before the Brown decision. I was really amazed at that. But it's going like that all over the country.
When I read over the opinions on your case, the thing that really struck me was this whole debate over what's public and what's private. What kind of rights do private institutions have, versus how should the public interest be defined?
They've got private hospitals now, and it's not only blacks that they won't accept, they won't accept white qualified physicians. An example is down at Hilton Head. I had one of my buddies who's an OB/GYN, board certified. He moved from Chicago to Hilton Head, and tried to get on the staff of the hospital, and they just refused him.
Did they give any reason why?
They don't have to give any reason why. They just turned down his application, even though he's certified. But no Hill-Burton funds were used to build it, and they can turn anybody down they want to.
For so long, lot of the previous cases had ruled, "This is a private institution," and the Hill-Burton Act specifically said that the act did not constitute authority of the federal government to control the facility, that it's just a grant. So it seems like that case was a real turning point, where that idea changed, at least for a while. But I think it's kind of gone back to giving private interests the upper hand.
And you've got a Supreme Court that's not sympathetic at all with integration. You've got a black man on there, Clarence Thomas, that has ruled any time a black issue comes up, he's ruled against blacks. For example, they had this prisoner who was handcuffed, shackled, and the sheriff was beating him and beating him. The man sued and said it was undue force. The majority of the Supreme Court agreed that it was undue force. Clarence Thomas said no, it was not undue force. You really don't have a chance now. I think Reagan moved in when he was president, and started things going in reverse.
It's not exactly the same, but if you were refused admitting rights to Moses Cone Hospital today, how do you think you would go about trying to change that? Would you still file a lawsuit?
Oh, yeah. Definitely. Let me tell you this. Thurgood Marshall, when I told him that we had gone out to the golf course and put our money on the table, and went on and played. We tried to sign the book and the man snatched the book from us, and we went on and played. He gave me a fit about that, he said, "You did it the wrong way. You should have gotten an injunction to prevent them from doing this. I don't like the way you did this." At that time, I didn't know what an injunction was.
You had to learn the ropes.
I learned more about the legal point of view when I became involved in this golf case, and legal terms.
I hadn't realized until you said so today that you'd been involved in public health. Did a lot of black health professionals do both public health work and have a private practice?
My daddy was a dentist here. When I first came out, he didn't want me to open up right away, especially not right next to him. I was living here with him, and I just took this job to save money to get started. That's how I started in public health.
Some of the things I've read in the late '40s, about when you went into public health, indicated that some people wanted to see public health cooperate a lot more with hospitals and private practitioners, and create a more complete system of health care, rather than having a strict division between public and private health. Do you remember that being the case when you started?
When I started, everything was segregated. The schools were segregated, so I only went to the [black] schools. I only worked on black patients. Never on a white patient. I never knew anything about what you're saying.
When I say integrated, I don't necessarily mean racially, but getting the public health system to cooperate with the private. It seems there wasn't always a strict division between public health and private, for-profit health care. Did you work with many white public health professionals during that period?
They had a white dentist who worked at the white schools, and I would work at the black schools. I had a trailer, and he had a trailer. I'd stay there until school closed, go there about 8:30 or 9 in the morning, and stay til 3 or 3:30. That was it.
Did you ever join the Old North State Medical and Dental Society?
Yes.
Did they take the lead in working for integration here? I get kind of
mixed signals sometimes from what I've read about them. In some cases,
it seems they're kind of hesitant to take a strong
Have you read Dr. Eaton's book?
Every Man Should Try. I'm reading it right now.
He took an active role, and he tried to sue the hospital down in Wilmington.
Walker vs. Eaton.
They threw that case out. Why, I don't know.
They decided the same way the court first decided in your case, that even though they'd gotten government funds, that didn't constitute state action. That was back in '57, so it was a little earlier.
He did some work with the Old North State in trying to open up the North Carolina Medical Society. Have you interviewed Reginald Hawkins? He's a dentist who used to practice in Charlotte. He brought suit against the North Carolina Dental Society, because we couldn't belong to the American Dental Association, because you had to belong to the [state] society. The North Carolina Dental Society wouldn't take us because of our race. Some of the members, Dr. Rand, got a scientific membership in the North Carolina Medical Society. Of course, he was criticized severely by a lot of the blacks for taking this type of membership.
They wouldn't let you go to social functions.
They didn't want you to dance with their wives or whatever. They just didn't want to accept you. So they gave him a scientific membership.
When did the North Carolina Medical Society stop having scientific membership, and begin offering full membership?
Have you met Dr. Phillips? You need to talk to him. He's a white retired neurosurgeon here. He's written some books and done a lot of research on the Greensboro and North Carolina Medical societies. He could really help you.
I did a lot of research on Wilson County, in the east. They built a desegregated hospital in 1964 with Hill-Burton funds, and a lot of blacks in Wilson felt that opportunities for black professionals in Wilson actually decreased after 1964 because, as we were discussing earlier, even though it admitted black patients, it didn't give black professionals admitting rights.
Even in 1964?
The doctors who had practiced at the old black hospital, Mercy, were
brought on the new staff after Mercy closed. But they were all older,
and they retired or died not too long after that. The new black
professionals who tried to get admitting rights couldn't, for one reason
or another. So I was going to try to talk to people in Greensboro to see
if something similar happened. Because it seems like Greensboro is
different in a lot of ways
You're talking about A & T—back then, they wouldn't allow Thurgood Marshall to even come on the campus, they were so conservative. I had Martin Luther King come in and speak to our branch at a public meeting. None of the churches would allow him to come in. We finally had to have it at Bennett College. They allowed us to have it at the auditorium. A & T wouldn't let him come over there, and the churches all said they weren't large enough.
So a lot of the black institutions were fairly conservative.
Very.
So as the new, younger professionals got board certified and got better training—as they came in, they were able to get admitting rights wherever they wanted in Greensboro?
Yes, after 1964. But I don't know, you need to talk to some of the younger fellows to see what's going on now. And I believe there's something going on in them.
I think there is too. People were so excited at the time that they'd really won a victory, and I think they had, but then some people got really disillusioned afterward that things didn't work out the way they thought they would. Sometimes it's hard to put your finger on just why.
There's a heart specialist, Harold Nichols. He can't even go out of town, because nobody will take his cases. I've heard that.
I've also heard it's been hard to get into group practices, and hardly anyone practices solo, at least in medicine. It's different in dentistry.
They think they're going to be left out of the HMOs that are taking over. The cost of forming your own HMO is just huge.
The more expensive it got, and the more specialization that was required, the more that hurt black physicians. And yet there were a lot more opportunities to get specialized training. That's all my questions. Did you have anything to add?
END OF INTERVIEW