Greensboro remembers civil rights activist Joseph McNeil

GREENSBORO, N.C. — One of North Carolina’s most influential civil rights activists died this week.

Joseph McNeil was one of the Greensboro Four, a group of North Carolina A&T students who held sit-ins at Woolworth’s lunch counter. 

Those protests eventually led to the restaurant’s desegregation 65 years ago.

John Swaine, the CEO of the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, educates the public about the Greensboro Four and McNeil’s role in the civil rights movement.

“After the sit-ins, he had entered the Air Force, he had become an Air Force general,” Swaine said, “He had established an institute, at his alma mater. He had become a mentor for many young men and women. And he inspired our co-founders to develop this institution.” 

So when Swaine received the call from Joe McNeil Jr. on Thursday informing him of the activist’s death, Swaine said it was crushing.

“It was a sharp hit because I understood what he meant to the world, to nonviolence and so much to this museum,” he said.

McNeil visited the museum, located in the same building he helped desegregate, many times.

This year he also visited N.C. A&T to celebrate 65 years since the first day of the sit-ins.

“It was a great pleasure of mine just to hear him talk about what it was like being a freshman here on the campus in the 1960s. Being a freshman, he was not a sophomore or a senior. These were incoming students,” said Corey Torain, a professor of history at N.C. A&T.

The professor said he remembers being a student at the school when they honored the Greensboro Four by placing a statue on campus. 

He said McNeil’s legacy was personally motivating and will never be forgotten by the school, the community and people fighting for social justice and equality everywhere.

“He inspired us and showed us what to do. So yes, it is a physical loss of having him away from us physically, but he will always be an Aggie, and once an Aggie, always Aggie,” Torain said.

McNeil was 83 years old.

Jibreel Khazan, formally known as Ezell Blair Jr., is now the only living member of the Greensboro Four.