Dr. George Simkins Jr. (August 23, 1924 – November 21, 2001) was a dentist, community leader in Greensboro, North Carolina, and civil rights activist.

During the 1950s, he won several significant desegregation lawsuits and was, for a quarter of a century, the president of the Greensboro branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Simkins opened a private dentistry practice upon returning to Greensboro and joined the Guilford County Health Department, becoming the first African American employed there.

[2] In 1940, the city of Greensboro constructed a golf course using public funds - 65 percent of which were provided by the federal government – as part of the Works Progress Administration.

Before the appeal to the state Supreme Court, middle district judge Johnson J. Hayes of North Wilkesboro gave the 6 a declaratory judgment, calling the "so-call lease" as a private facility invalid.

[citation needed] "To hold otherwise would open a Pandora's box by which governmental agencies could deprive citizens of their constitutional rights by the artifice of a lease," Hayes wrote in his opinion.

"The golf club permits white people to play without being members, except it requires the prepayment of green fees", he wrote.

Thurgood Marshall (director –general for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund) said "George, your lawyers ought to be the ones going to jail instead of us the way they screwed the case up.

"[6] A strong dissenting opinion by Chief Justice Warren prompted North Carolina Governor Luther Hodges to commute the jail sentences of the five surviving plaintiffs.

[7] After the clubhouse was burned two weeks before Judge Hayes' order to integrate the course, the Fire Marshall condemned the entire facility.

[8] It took seven years, a campaign to vote in a completely new City Council and the pleading of the entire community, including former pro Ernie Edwards, to get Gillespie reopened.

Even though most North Carolina hospitals were privately operated, some accepted state and federal funds and that implicated possible government discrimination.

According to Karen Kruse Thomas, the Simkins v. Cone (1963) "decision marked the first time that federal courts applied the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to prohibit racial discrimination by a private entity" (Encyclopedia of N.C., p. 1038).

The year after the Simkins decision, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, officially prohibiting private discrimination in public places.