Gillespie Golf Course

Gillespie (originally Gillespie Park) was built by the City of Greensboro with Works Progress Administration funding and opened in 1949 as a whites-only public course. On December 7, 1955, six Black golfers -- Dr. George Simkins Jr., Phillip Cooke, Samuel Murray, Elijah Herring, Joseph Sturdivant and Leon Wolfe, later known as the Greensboro Six -- played the course in defiance of segregation and were arrested and convicted of trespassing. Their challenge produced the federal case Simkins v. City of Greensboro; after the clubhouse burned and the course was condemned, it reopened to all players about seven years later. A North Carolina Civil Rights Trail marker now commemorates the protest, and the municipal course still operates today.