Black Excellence: Joseph McNeil
There was a time when Joseph McNeil was heading toward a life of segregation. Separate bathrooms, beaches, theaters, schools, elevators, cemeteries. Separate was what he knew.
“I had experienced that, my parents had experienced that, their parents had experienced that,” McNeil said in 2014. “And in all likelihood, my off-spring, my children, would have faced the same issues.”
McNeil, and his three fellow students at North Carolina A&T, played an enormous role in heading off that “life of segregation” when they led a sit-in at the Greensboro Woolworth’s lunch counter in 1960.
According to his family, McNeil passed away Wednesday. He was 83 years old.