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.

Joseph McNeil (left) stands next to Ezell Blair Jr (center), student leader of the original lunch counter sit-down demonstration, with Dr George C Simkins, dentist and local NAACP leader, in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960. Photograph: AP

. . .

“We were quite serious, and the issue that we rallied behind was a very serious issue because it represented years of suffering and disrespect and humiliation,” McNeil said in a 2010 Associated Press story on the 50th anniversary of the sit-in, which included the opening of the International Civil Rights Center & Museum on the site of the old Woolworth’s store. “Segregation was an evil kind of thing that needed attention.”

On the sit-in’s first day, the four young men stayed until the store closed, but returned the next day and subsequent days. More protesters joined them, leading to at least 1,000 by the fifth day. Within weeks, sit-ins were launched in more than 50 cities in nine states. The Woolworth’s counter in Greensboro – about 75 miles (120km) west of Raleigh – was desegregated within six months.

McNeil and his classmates “inspired a nation with their courageous, peaceful protest, powerfully embodying the idea that young people could change the world”, school chancellor James Martin said in a news release. “His leadership and the example of the A&T Four continue to inspire our students today,.” A monument to the four men sits on the A&T campus.

. . .