Joseph McNeil, One Of The Greensboro 4, Dies Of Parkinson’s

[ad_1] by Daniel Johnson September 6, 2025

The Greensboro 4 collectively helped to alter the course of American historical past once they carried out a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter.

Joseph McNeil, one of many Greensboro 4, a gaggle of scholars enrolled at North Carolina A&T College who engaged in what's acknowledged as one of many seminal non-violent protests which marked the start of pupil involvement within the civil rights motion, died on Sept. 4 in a New York hospice care facility. McNeil was 83 years outdated.

In line with The New York Instances, his widow, Ina McNeil, indicated that the reason for his loss of life was Parkinson’s Illness.

McNeil and Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. (who would later be often called Jibreel Khazan) and David Richmond collectively helped to alter the course of American historical past on Feb. 1, 1960, once they approached the counter to order espresso at a downtown Woolworth’s in what was initially a neighborhood protest relating to the chain’s coverage barring Black patrons from being waited on on the lunch counter.

As he instructed Newsday, Lengthy Island’s newspaper, “What we did, we thought was the correct factor to do to clear up a improper. This was not within the days of the water hoses or canine. If there was violence, it was the pushy model; issues being thrown, cigarettes being thrown onto garments, makes an attempt at bodily intimidation, verbal harassment. We stayed as a result of we didn't simply need to win the battle. We needed to win the conflict.”

What initially started as a considerably unpopular protest regionally shortly morphed right into a full fledged motion for justice, their preliminary protest was quickly joined in solidarity by a gaggle of white ladies college students from what's now the College of North Carolina-Greensboro. Just a few months after their protest, college students throughout the South started utilizing the Greensboro 4’s protest as a mannequin.

By the top of April, over 50,000 college students in 54 cities throughout eight Southern states had engaged in their very own protests, and 6 months after the preliminary protest, Woolworth’s desegregated their lunch counters, providing equal service to all who patronized their shops.

In line with David Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the civil rights motion, the work of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr and others who constructed a nationwide motion throughout that decade are owed to the Greensboro 4 for kicking off the Black freedom battle of the Nineteen Sixties.

It was “these 4 guys on Feb. 1 who actually do set the Southern Black freedom battle of the Nineteen Sixties,” Garrow famous.

He continued, “It kicked off an outstanding, regionwide motion of Black school college students towards segregated public lunch counters, and it led, very immediately, in a short time, to the outstanding assembly in Raleigh that created (the) Scholar Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.” (SNCC)

Because the New York Instances famous, it was the temporary time that McNeil spent within the North, the place the oppressive system of Jim Crow, rooted in fact, within the Southern system of enslavement, was absent, that made residing underneath that system incompatible together with his want for freedom.

As a substitute of staying together with his household, who moved to New York when his father received a job with {an electrical} firm in Queens, McNeil selected the South, electing to reside with an aunt in Wilmington, North Carolina.

On the thirtieth anniversary of the sit-in, McNeil was requested by a Greensboro reporter in regards to the braveness it took for his or her group to face as much as Jim Crow. He responded that it took quite a lot of braveness.

“In hindsight, a heck of quite a bit,” he instructed the reporter. “I don’t suppose we had been as naïve as some of us have recommended. There have been uncertainties. I believe we had a way of resolve, and I believe it took plenty of braveness.”

After his commencement from North Carolina A&T in 1963 with a level in engineering physics in tow, McNeil served six years within the Air Power, which noticed him serve aboard the KC-135, a refueling airplane, throughout the unpopular Vietnam Warfare.

Whereas stationed in South Dakota, he married Ina Brown, a quilt maker, who's of Lakota heritage, following his service, the 2 settled in Hempstead, New York, on Lengthy Island.

Finally, he retired from the Air Power in 2000 with the rank of main common. Notably, he additionally labored for the Federal Aviation Administration, the place he was positioned in command of the flight requirements for a number of of the division’s areas.

Among the many Greensboro 4, McNeil was preceded in loss of life by Richmond and McCain, the previous in 1990 and the latter in 2014. He was additionally preceded in loss of life by his son, Ron. Along with his widow, McNeil is survived by his sons Alan, Joseph and Frank; a daughter, Jacqueline Jackson; seven grandchildren; and 4 great-grandchildren.