The Rev. Earl A. Neil was a priest and human rights activist who was born on December 17, 1935 in Saint Paul, Minnesota to Katherine L. and Earl W. Neil. He grew up in St. Paul and attended Carleton College, from which he graduated in 1957. He attended Seabury-Western Theology Seminary in Evanston, Illinois where he completed his ministerial training in 1969. He was ordained in the Episcopal Church the same year.
From his first assignment, Neil experienced the often subtle and sometimes blatant racial prejudice that would both constrain his opportunities for service and inspire him to work for change. Unable to receive an appointment in this home state, he accepted his first assignment in Wichita, Kansas, at the mission congregation of St. Augustine’s, an all-black parish. After losing diocesan sponsorship, the church was closed down. The loss of his parish inspired him to make resistance to segregation the heart of his pastoral mission.
Neil transferred to Christ’s Church in Woodlawn, a mission congregation in Chicago, in 1964. In the summer of 1965, he helped to organize the historic Civil Rights march from Selma to Montgomery, and spent several months in the South helping to register voters. The perversive hostility and violence Neil witnessed in the South – most notably the fatal beating of a Unitarian minister from Boston outside of a restaurant where he and a fellow vicar from Chicago had just eaten – strengthened his commitment to racial equality.
In Chicago he put his beliefs into action, becoming the chapter president of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity (ESCRU) as well as joining The Woodlawn Organization (TWO), a powerful and stabilizing force in Chicago, because of their organized efforts in dealing with Mayor Richard J. Daley’s political machine.
Frustrated with the ability of black priests to work effectively in a mission congregation, Earl Neil transferred to St. Agustine’s Church in Oakland, California, where he continued to confront racial tensions. With the indirect support of Bishop Chauncie Kilmer Meyers, Neil reached out to the Black Panthers, even sheltering members of the group and becoming involved in a standoff on April 3rd, 1968, when law enforcement officials ordered him to give up the Panthers who were seeking refuge. Neil refused. His defense of the Panthers, whose use of violence generated a mixed response from the church community, revealed the firmness of his conviction. On the following day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, and Neil sponsored a joint memorial service at St. Augustine’s to commemorate the lives of Dr. King and Bobby Hutton, a Black Panther member killed at the same time.
Flowing from his involvement in the struggle for racial equality, Neil turned his focus to include the wider church and its members. In 1977 he began his work with the Coalition for Human Needs, a church organization created with his help, for the purpose of improving the lives of underprivileged and neglected members of society.
In 1985, Neil made his first visit to South Africa, where he found the spiritual involvement a pleasant change from American materialism. An initial three-month sabbatical in 1990 grew into a three year stay during which he worked on the staff of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Church of South Africa’s Department of Justice and Reconciliation. He also met and married Angela Kazzie in 1991. The couple has one daughter. In 2005, after forty-five years of ministry, Neil and his wife took permanent residency in South Africa, where they resided until his death on March 11, 2024. He is survived by his wife Angela, daughter, Latoya and one grandson.
