Joseph McNeil, Greensboro Four civil rights icon, memorialized at NC A&T service
Hours before Joseph McNeil’s viewing and memorial service in the campus auditorium, students at North Carolina A&T State University paused on their way to class Thursday to remember the man they said means everything to them.
“The Greensboro Four, McNeil, all four of them, give us our power and sense of identity at A&T, to be brave and go do a sit-in or a walk or a march for our rights as a Black people, and human rights as a whole,” junior Zariya Hargett, 20, told The Charlotte Observer.
She was born the same day 45 years after McNeil and three A&T classmates sparked the Civil Rights Movement with their lunch counter protest at an F.W. Woolworth in downtown Greensboro.
“If it wasn’t for him and the sacrifice he and his friends made many years ago, we wouldn’t be here, and it really means a lot to me,” junior Bryson Hughes said.
Maj. Gen. Joseph Alfred McNeil, whose lunch counter protest with three other A&T students sparked the Civil Rights Movement, died on Sept. 4. He was 83.
North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein ordered all U.S. and North Carolina flags at state buildings to be lowered to half-staff on Saturday, when McNeil will be buried in his hometown of Wilmington.
“Today, we come to celebrate a life that was well lived,” Vicki McCain, pastor of Presbyterian Church of the Cross, told McNeil’s family and hundreds of friends in Harrison Auditorium on Thursday. “His faith and bravery at a Woolworth’s lunch counter lit a flame of justice that still burns bright today.”
McNeil, whom McCain called Uncle Joe, “faced hatred, threats and uncertainty, yet he remained steadfast ... He shaped generations and inspired us to stand for what is right.”
“We can’t serve you here”
McNeil was 17 when he and classmates Franklin McCain, David Richmond and Jibreel Khazan, formerly Ezell Blair Jr., launched their sit-in on Feb. 1, 1960. McNeil asked for coffee and was denied.
Khazan is now the only survivor. David Richmond died in 1990 and Franklin McCain in 2014.
“They said, ‘We can’t serve you here — you have to go around the corner there,’” McNeil recalled in a 2014 interview with WUNC FM. “And for me, that was the final blow of humiliation. And I had had enough. And I made up my mind that I had to do something.”
McNeil and his classmates stayed until the store closed and returned the next day and others, Bishop William Barber II said during his eulogy at McNeil’s service.
“This was not microwave activism, to say you were there and then get back to your business,” Barber said. “Brother McNeil taught us that challenging history requires heroic acts by ordinary people.”
The sit-in inspired similar ones around North Carolina and a national movement with 700,000 students, clergy members and others fighting for racial equality. The sit-in also helped lay the groundwork for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, according to North Carolina A&T.
McNeil was always kind to him and his siblings, loved their mom and worked hard throughout his life to seek justice, Joseph McNeil Jr. told service-goers. “Now we are the tools to seek that justice. We are the tools to make that family. We must make that heaven on earth.”
As McNeil told his children, his son said, “now lean in and get to work.”
Storied military career
After graduating from North Carolina A&T in 1963 with a degree in engineering physics, Joseph McNeil was commissioned as a second lieutenant through ROTC and began a distinguished Air Force career, according to his university.
He flew many operations as a KC-135 navigator, including during the Vietnam War. He was reactivated during Desert Storm and rose through the Air Force Reserve to command the 22nd Air Force, in charge of all Air Force Reservists east of the Mississippi.
He received the Distinguished Service Medal and multiple other commendations before retiring in 2000, according to NC A&T.
He later worked at IBM, in finance at Bankers Trust and E.F. Hutton and for the Federal Aviation Administration as manager of the East Region Flight Standards Division. He led the New York Flight Standards District Office until retiring in 2002.
His social justice work lasted a lifetime, his family said.
And North Carolina A&T students said his legacy lives on.
“He pushed us forward,” student says
Freshman Erin Pridgen said she’s inspired “to have leaders such as McNeil who attended our school. It serves as a motivation to all the students who go here, to make your voice more heard and to really start up and create something for yourself.”
She and other students spoke to the Observer near the 15-foot-tall bronze and marble sculpture depicting the young men as they walked down the sidewalk to Woolworth’s.
“It’s still a struggle,” Hargett said about racial equality. “But he pushed us forward and gives us the courage to keep chasing after a higher education and our activism, whether that be big or small.”
How to visit the Greensboro lunch counter
The site is now home to the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, 134 S. Elm St., and includes the restored, original lunch counter, along with 35,000 square feet of exhibit space with original artifacts, interactive exhibits and powerful narratives.
The museum is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Saturday. You can buy tickets online for tours ranging from $15 to $20. Learn more at sitinmovement.org.
This story was originally published September 12, 2025 at 5:00 AM.