Services for 'Greensboro Four' activist Joseph McNeil to be held in Hempstead
Retired Air Force Major Gen. Joseph McNeil is honored for his contributions to the civil rights movement on July 24, 2005, in Eisenhower Park in East Meadow. Credit: Howard Schnapp
Funeral services will be held in Hempstead on Monday for civil rights pioneer Joseph McNeil, who sat at a segregated lunch counter in defiance of the Jim Crow South as one of the "Greensboro Four” in 1960.
The longtime Hempstead resident died Sept. 4 at the age of 83.
A wake will be held at 2 p.m. at Union Baptist Church in Hempstead, followed by a 4 p.m. funeral service, according to a news release.
McNeil and three other Black freshmen at North Carolina A&T State University made their mark on the civil rights movement when they sat at a "whites only" Woolworth’s store lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Feb. 1, 1960. They were denied service but refused to leave despite police pressure. After their original sit-in, McNeil and his fellow college students returned the day after day to the Woolworth’s store.
Joseph McNeil, left, and Ezell Blair, another member of the "Greensboro Four," with Dr. George C. Simkins, a Greensboro, North Carolina, dentist and local NAACP leader, on April 20, 1960. Credit: AP
"I was proud then and I'm proud now," McNeil told Newsday in 2021 as part of a series on iconic Long Island Black activists.
McNeil’s son, Joseph McNeil Jr., said his father believed in hard work and in service to others.
That was his goal,” McNeil Jr. told Newsday last week. “[To] give folks an opportunity who wouldn’t have had an opportunity without someone like him opening the door."
McNeil was born on March 25, 1942, in Wilmington, North Carolina, and grew up there, according to North Carolina A&T and the Air Force. He became a member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps, or ROTC, at the university. McNeil retired from the Air Force Reserve as a two-star general and also worked for the Federal Aviation Administration, according to his son.
Streets in his native Wilmington and Hempstead have been renamed in his honor. A bronze and marble sculpture depicting the Greensboro Four stands 15 feet tall at their former campus, according to an obituary posted to the North Carolina A&T website.
McNeil will be interred in Wilmington later this week, his family said.
Newsday's Nicholas Grasso contributed to this story.
Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.
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