Shades of Privilege: Two African American Families that Transformed the Carolinas, and the Nation
(eBook)

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    [year] => 2022
    [artist] => Jeanne Simkins Hollis
    [fiction] => 
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    [titleId] => 14767995
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    [language] => ENGLISH
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    [title] => Shades of Privilege
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                    [name] => George Simkins III
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                    [name] => Deborah Mathis
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    [synopsis] => In 1951, George Simkins, Jr., of Greensboro, and Anna Oleona Atkins of Winston-Salem were married. Their elegant wedding not only brought together the black elite of North Carolina's Piedmont Triad, but more significantly, it merged two families who, arguably, did more to advance civil rights in the Carolinas than any other.

George C. Simkins, Jr. hailed from an old line of South Carolina high achievers-the descendant of men who founded and settled communities, served as governors and members of Congress, fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, and built elegant plantations along meandering rivers. Those were his white ancestors. The patriarch of the Black Simkinses, George's direct lineage, outlived slavery and became businessmen, lawyers, educators and lawyers and distinguished themselves in ways his white slave-holding father and enslaved mother could never have dreamed.

And from that tree came George, who lived a relatively privileged life of ease until he decided one day to take a stand and play golf on the city's whites-only golf course. That move landed him in jail, and firmly in the throes of the civil rights movement. For the next 50 years, he would challenge every segregationist institution and convention he encountered. He rattled the white establishment, sued it, harassed it, exposed it and won.

Segregated health care in the United States came tumbling down because of George Simkins' dogged litigation. Greensboro Schools were forced to end their pretense of compliance with the Brown decision and actually implement full desegregation because of Simkins' challenges. The lunch counters, retail stores, city employment rolls, libraries, sports facilities, bank staffs in Greensboro all bowed to Simkins' unrelenting pressure to install racial justice. He was, as one noted civil rights advocate noted, "Greensboro's preeminent civil rights activist of the 20th Century."

Anna was cut from a different cloth. A statuesque beauty, her transparent refinement and poise might have easily led people to believe that she might be too demur for the movement. But her ancestry suggested otherwise.

Anna's grandfather was Simon Greene Atkins, the son of former slaves and farmers, who seized upon education as his means of escaping the dread fate of most black Southerners at the dawn of the 20th Century. Simon's mastery of knowledge made him, first, a respected teacher, then principal, then, at last, founder of an institution of higher learning for African Americans. What is now Winston-Salem State University began as a twinkle in Simon's eye, materializing as a single building with one teacher and 25 students. In 2017, the thriving school celebrated its 125th anniversary.

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    [subtitle] => Two African American Families that Transformed the Carolinas, and the Nation
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