Joseph McNeil, Greensboro Civil Rights Pioneer Who Sparked Sit-In Movement, Passes Away at 83
Joseph McNeil, one of the four college freshmen whose bold decision to sit at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, ignited a nationwide movement that fundamentally changed the trajectory of the civil rights struggle, died Thursday at a hospice in Port Jefferson, New York. He was 83.
His wife, Ina McNeil, confirmed his death was due to Parkinson’s disease. With McNeil’s passing, only one member of the legendary “Greensboro Four” remains alive.
The Moment That Changed History
On February 1, 1960, McNeil and three classmates from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College—Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. (later known as Jibreel Khazan), and David Richmond—entered the downtown Greensboro Woolworth’s store and sat at the whites-only lunch counter. Their simple act of ordering coffee while Black would reverberate across the nation and accelerate the civil rights movement in ways they never anticipated.
“What we did, we thought was the right thing to do to clear up a wrong,” McNeil later explained. The four students had grown increasingly frustrated with Jim Crow segregation and were determined to challenge a system that allowed them to shop at Woolworth’s but prohibited them from sitting at the lunch counter.
When the waitress declared, “We don’t serve Negroes here,” the students remained seated despite threats from management and the intimidating presence of a police officer drumming his nightstick. They stayed until the store closed early, returning each day with growing numbers of supporters.
A Movement Takes Flight
What began as an act of four determined teenagers rapidly expanded beyond anyone’s imagination. Within days, hundreds of students had joined the protests. By the end of February, students from two dozen colleges across eight Southern states were demanding equal service. Within two months, sit-ins had spread to 54 cities, engaging more than 50,000 young people in peaceful protests.
The Greensboro sit-in proved to be the catalyst that civil rights leaders had long sought. As historian David Garrow noted, while Martin Luther King Jr. struggled to build a nationwide movement after the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, “those four guys on Feb. 1 really do set the Southern Black freedom struggle of the 1960s.”
The protests led directly to the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which became instrumental in organizing the Freedom Rides and building momentum toward the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Early Life and Education
Joseph Alfred McNeil was born March 25, 1942, in Wilmington, North Carolina, to Mildred and Alfred McNeil. His mother worked as a dietitian, while his father relocated the family to New York for an electrical company job. McNeil, however, maintained strong ties to North Carolina, living with an aunt in Wilmington and graduating from an all-Black high school there.
His exposure to the relatively integrated North made segregation increasingly difficult to bear. A pivotal moment came during his return to college after winter break in 1960, when he was denied service at a bus station lunch counter in Richmond, Virginia. This incident became “one of the many straws on the camel’s back” that drove him toward activism.
McNeil stood out among his peers as an intellectually gifted student with a photographic memory who quoted Shakespeare and Aristotle. His roommate Khazan remembered him as someone whose conversations centered on ideals rather than material concerns, and who possessed impeccable fashion sense with his Italian clothes and shoes.
Beyond the Lunch Counter
After graduating in 1963 with a degree in engineering physics, McNeil served six years in the Air Force as a navigator on KC-135 aerial refueling planes during the Vietnam War. He continued his military career in the Air Force Reserve, eventually retiring in 2000 with the rank of major general after more than two decades of service.
McNeil also worked for the Federal Aviation Administration, overseeing flight standards for several regions. He married Ina Brown, a quilt maker of Lakota descent, while stationed in South Dakota, and the couple settled in Hempstead, New York, on Long Island.
Legacy and Recognition
The Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro finally desegregated on July 25, 1960, six months after that first sit-in. The store closed in 1993, but a section of the original lunch counter now resides in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. In 2010, the International Civil Rights Center & Museum opened at the original Woolworth’s location in downtown Greensboro.
McNeil and his fellow protesters received numerous honors, including the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal from the Smithsonian Institution in 2010. A statue commemorating the Greensboro Four stands outside Scott Hall at North Carolina A&T, where they first planned their historic protest as freshmen.
Reflecting on Courage
When asked years later about the courage required to challenge segregation, McNeil remained characteristically thoughtful: “In hindsight, a heck of a lot. I don’t think we were as naïve as some folks have suggested. There were uncertainties. I thin
