Major Gen. Joseph McNeil, one of the four black college freshmen who staged the 1960 Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina, died Thursday at 83, North Carolina A&T State University announced.
McNeil, then 17, joined three classmates from North Carolina A&T in entering the segregated Woolworth’s on Feb. 1, 1960, where they bought supplies then sat at the whites-only counter, refusing to leave when denied service, according to the university. (RELATED: ‘A Man Of Faith’: Last American World War II Ace Pilot Dies At 103)
Within five days, the protest grew from four students to more than 1,000 and spread to over 50 cities in nine states, NBC News reported. The sit-ins helped lead to the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and laid groundwork for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
A section of the original F.W. Woolworth lunch counter from Greensboro, North Carolina, where in 1960 four African-American college students launched the sit-in movement, appears as part of a new exhibit called, “Make Some Noise: Students and the Civil Rights Movement,” at the Newseum in Washington, DC, on August 2, 2013. (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
McNeil said the idea for direct action followed a humiliating incident at a bus terminal restaurant.
“They said, ‘We can’t serve you here – you have to go around the corner there,’” he recalled in 2014, according to the university. “And for me, that was the final blow of humiliation. And I had had enough.”
Drawing on his ROTC training, McNeil helped coordinate sit-ins at multiple sites without the benefit of modern communication, keeping demonstrations orderly and nonviolent.
“It was about choice,” he later said. “I don’t choose Black water or white water or colored water. I want water.”
After college, McNeil served in the Air Force Reserves, retiring in 2001 as a two-star general, NBC News reported. He later worked as an investment banker.
Jibreel Khazan, formerly Ezell Blair Jr., is now the last surviving member of the A&T Four. Chancellor James Martin said McNeil and his classmates “inspired a nation with their courageous, peaceful protest.”