A Civil Rights icon who shaped history from a lunch counter in Greensboro has died- (1942-2025).
McNeil was one of four Black freshmen from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina, today known as North Carolina A&T State University, who sat down at the segregated lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro and asked to be served on Feb. 1, 1960. When staff refused to serve them, they refused to leave.
Joseph Alfred McNeil was born March 25, 1942, in Wilmington. He spent his childhood in the port city and graduated from Williston Senior High School. He came from a comfortable middle-class family and did well enough to earn a full scholarship to A&T. There, he quickly earned the adoration of Khazan.
“One reason I liked being his roommate was I liked listening to him. He was the type of person – he quoted Aristotle, Plato,” said Khazan.
Khazan also said his friend had a great sense of fashion.
“He was a sharp dresser who wore Italian clothes. Italian shoes and everything. I said, ‘Can I borrow a sweater for the weekend?’ I knew if I wore his sweater that maybe the magic will come off on me,” said Khazan.
After his first semester at A&T, McNeil spent the holidays with family in New York City. He returned to Greensboro on a Greyhound bus following winter break. As he traveled farther south, he noticed the attitude toward him changed. In Richmond, McNeil was denied service at a lunch counter.
“Keep going through day-to-day life and getting these prompts – the denial of service at the bus station and somebody making an offhanded racial remark and it just never ended,” McNeil recalled.
When McNeil returned to the A&T campus, he found friends in his dorm who were equally frustrated. There were four defiant, brave, fed-up teenagers who hoped to break a cycle of separation. They devised a plan on January 31, 1960. It was fraught with uncertainty.
“Anxious would be apropos for me,” he said. “I wanted to get going, get it over with.”
The four men walked into the Woolworths in downtown Greensboro on February 1, sat down and asked to be served. They were not.
Franklin McCain was next to McNeil. The other two men – Khazan and Richmond – were a few feet away.
As the men sat, a police officer walked back and forth with a nightstick in his hand. Many white patrons glared, but it never turned violent. And when the store closed a few hours later, the four young men returned to campus, hungry and without any idea of what they had just started.
The sit-in movement spread quickly. The four men were joined by 20 others the next day, and 300 turned out by the end of the week. Sit-ins began in Winston-Salem, Durham, Asheville and Wilmington, then like a spiderweb, encompassing the southeast, with sit-ins taking place from Richmond to St. Louis and Florida to Nashville.
It was there, in the capital of Tennessee, where the largest demonstrations took place. Hundreds of people participated, and Nashville lunch counters were the first in the south to be desegregated.
The Greensboro Woolworth’s desegregated its lunch counters six months after the first sit in. Four Black employees were the first to be served.
McNeil graduated from A&T in 1963 with a degree in engineering and physics. He served in the United States Air Force, flying combat missions over Vietnam and earned the rank of major general before retiring. He also worked with the Federal Aviation Administration.
McNeil settled in New York and had five children with his wife.
Major General Joseph McNeil, died at the age of 83 on September 10, 2025.
North Carolina A&T State University released the following statement in the wake of McNeil’s passing, saying in part, “Despite health challenges, Maj. Gen. McNeil came back to A&T this past February (2025) to mark the 65th anniversary of the sit-in at the annual breakfast honoring the A&T Four. The audience at the breakfast gave him a standing ovation.”
Today, the site of the Woolworth’s location in Greensboro serves as the home of the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, located at 134 S. Elm Street, and a restored version of the Woolworth’s lunch counter is on display.
A portion of the original counter can be found at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.