Joseph McNeil, Who Helped Spark a Protest Movement at a North Carolina Lunch Counter, Dies at 83

Joseph McNeil, one of the "A&T Four" who initiated the 1960 Greensboro sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter, died at age 83. As a freshman at North Carolina A&T State University, McNeil and three classmates staged a nonviolent protest that quickly expanded to thousands of participants and inspired similar demonstrations in over 50 cities across nine states. Their actions contributed significantly to the civil rights movement, helping to pass landmark legislation, and McNeil later became a two-star major general in the Air Force Reserves before working as an investment banker.