Joseph McNeil, who helped spark a protest movement at a North Carolina lunch counter, dies at 83

Joseph McNeil, a civil rights pioneer who sat at a segregated lunch counter in defiance of the Jim Crow South as one of the "Greensboro Four," has died. The longtime Hempstead resident was 83.

McNeil died Thursday at Good Shepherd Hospice in Port Jefferson of complications of Parkinson’s disease, according to his son, Joseph McNeil Jr., who described his father as a "thoughtful" man who "understood the power of his words."

"He believed in hard work and being of service to people who couldn’t be at the table," McNeil Jr. told Newsday Thursday in a phone interview. "That was his goal, to give folks an opportunity who wouldn’t have had an opportunity without someone like him opening the door."

Passing down his story

McNeil shared his story with school children, including students at Joseph A. McNeil Elementary School in Hempstead, renamed in his honor in 2018.

"I was proud then and I'm proud now," McNeil told Newsday in 2021 as part of a series on iconic Long Island Black activists.

North Carolina A&T, where McNeil attended at the time of the lunch counter sit-in, said McNeil faced health challenges in recent years but attended an observance of the 65th anniversary of the landmark protest earlier this year. Jibreel Khazan — formerly Ezell Blair Jr. — is the sole surviving member of the four. David Richmond died in 1990, proceeded by Franklin McCain in 2014.

The date that is etched in Civil Rights-era history is Feb. 1, 1960. That was the day McNeil and three other Black freshmen at North Carolina A&T State University sat at a "whites only" Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro. They were denied service but refused to leave despite police pressure. After their original sit-in, McNeil and his fellow college students returned day-after-day to Woolworth’s.

Successful desegregation

Their ranks grew beyond 1,000 protesters by their fifth sit-in. The form of nonviolent protests successfully desegregated the lunch counter within six months and inspired similar demonstrations in more than 50 cities across nine states. The International Civil Rights Center & Museum now stands at the site of the Woolworth's.

"He was my living hero, someone whom I had a chance to sit next to and go to lunch with once a month to sit around and laugh and talk about ... should I say the good old days or the bad old days?" said Charles Renfroe, who served as the Hempstead board of education president when the school was renamed.

"He enjoyed going to the school every chance that he got," Renfroe added of McNeil. "The kids loved him. In fact, while he was in the hospital, we must have gotten 100, or maybe even more, get-well cards from students who made them by hand."

McNeil was born on March 25, 1942, in Wilmington, North Carolina, and grew up there, according to North Carolina A&T and the Air Force. He became a member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps, or ROTC, at the university. McNeil retired from the Air Force Reserve as a two-star general and also worked for the Federal Aviation Administration, according to his son.

Streets in his native Wilmington and Hempstead have been renamed in his honor. A bronze and marble sculpture depicting the Greensboro Four stands 15-feet tall at their former campus, according to an obituary posted to the North Carolina A&T website.

'Profoundly grateful'

In a statement to Newsday, Tracey Edwards, the NAACP Long Island regional director, described McNeil as a "pioneer" and "revered."

"Maj. Gen. McNeil’s footsteps crossed from the segregated lunch counters of Greensboro to the heights of military leadership," Edwards said. "He risked it all to sit at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch counter and we are forever and profoundly grateful to him for his military service and life-long commitment to justice."

A service for friends and family is being planned for Sunday at the Carl C Burnett Funeral Home in Hempstead. Another service is being planned for Thursday at North Carolina A&T, McNeil’s son said. His final services and internment are being arranged for Sept. 13 at a cemetery in Wilmington.

In addition to his son, McNeil is survived by his wife Ina McNeil, and sons Alan and Frank McNeil, and daughter Jacqueline Jackson. Another son, Ron His Horse Is Thunder, preceded him in death, Joseph McNeil Jr. said. 

The Associated Press contributed to this story.