Later a general in the air force reserves, McNeil was one of four students who sat at a North Carolina Woolworth’s
Joseph McNeil, one of four North Carolina college students whose occupation of a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter 65 years ago helped spark nonviolent civil rights sit-in protests across the US south, died Thursday, his family and university said. He was 83.
McNeil, who later became a two-star general, was one of four freshmen at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro who sat down at the local “whites only” counter on 1 February 1960. The four were refused service and declined to give up their seats even as the store manager and police urged them to move on.
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