Anti-segregation pioneer from LI honored by Smithsonian

By sitting down at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., 50 years ago this month, Maj. Gen. Joseph A. McNeil, of Hempstead, and his three colleagues - all young African-American college students at the time - believed they were standing up for "human dignity."

The efforts of McNeil and his sit-in partners - Franklin E. McCain, Jibreel Khazan (formerly known as Ezell Blair Jr.) and the late David L. Richmond - were honored earlier this month in a ceremony in Washington, D.C., with one of the Smithsonian Institution's highest honors, the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal.

McNeil's citation accompanying the medal lauded the "four courageous and committed students who challenged inequality at the segregated F.W. Woolworth's lunch counter," calling him an "inspiring role model for young Americans nationwide" and "an example of the power of an individual to make the nation a better place."

MORE: Full Q&A with Maj. Gen. Joseph A. McNeil

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"It's a type of spiritual thanksgiving for me to be a part of these events," McNeil said of the sit-ins.

McNeil, 67, now a husband, father and grandfather who is retired from careers in the Air Force Reserves and with the Federal Aviation Administration, reflected on the sit-ins in an interview this week.

He said that act of protest emphasized the principle of "nonviolence and giving of one's self in a sense of service to community." He praised the "many sacrifices" others made "so that we can all live with a sense of human dignity today that did not exist 50 years ago."

McNeil was a freshman at what is now North Carolina A&T State University on Feb. 1, 1960, when he and the other men started the sit-ins that would galvanize participation of about 1,000 young people in Greensboro, he said.

The sit-ins spread to about 70 sites in several Southern cities over five months, ending segregated lunch counters at Woolworth's.

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History has a section of that original Woolworth's lunch counter on display. It's considered a "landmark object" that now "anchors our exhibits on American ideals," said museum spokeswoman Melinda Machado.

William Yeingst, museum curator who was involved in procuring the lunch counter section in the 1990s, said the Greensboro sit-ins were not the first. He said adult activists had staged sit-ins periodically. But he said the Greensboro-led efforts were significant because it "inaugurated the student-led phase of the modern civil rights movement."

Yeingst said the protest "was not just a central moment in African-American history, but central to telling the story of the American experience."

McNeil was back home this week after several speaking engagements marking the 50th anniversary of the sit-ins. In addition to his appearance at the Smithsonian, he has spoken at Greensboro's civil rights museum, located in the old Woolworth's store, where the rest of the original lunch counter remains, and at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and in Boise, Idaho.

He said the Smithsonian award ranks high "because the medal itself is a national medal. . . . It ties us in with a piece of history that's significant."

McNeil said he and his colleagues accepted their awards for "many of the unsung" men and women "whose name you don't read about. We accepted it in the sense that we were symbolic of all those who served in the past."