Joan Sharpe Neal was the daughter of sharecroppers from Edgecombe County in eastern North Carolina. She was among the first generations in her family who went from the fields to the factories, prevalent in the 1980s in the eastern blackbelt. 
Joan stepped forward as an activist in BWFJ’s 1988 campaign to organize workers at the Schlage Lock plant in Rocky Mount, North Carolina when the plant issued a surprise notice to the workers that the plant would immediately close and move its manufacturing to Tecate, Mexico. The company promised the workers closing benefits such as severance pay but later reneged, planning to leave the workforce stranded. BWFJ helped the workers organize to win back those promised benefits. During the campaign, a cancer cluster resulting in the death of 25 workers was discovered and traced back to toxic waste Schlage was dumping in the surrounding area. Joan was an unassuming member of the fightback waged by the workers for just compensation and accountability of the company. As a result of the struggle the workers not only won back the promised benefits but expanded those benefits to include extended health care coverage for all the workers and the Rocky Mount plant designated as a Superfund Clean-up Site under the EPA.
In 1989, in the wake of the successful Schlage Lock struggle, Joan joined the Black Workers for Justice. In the Fall Joan also became staff in the Organization Department of the Abner Berry Freedom Library and Workers Center in Rocky Mount. Joan later became coordinator of the Library and Workers Center.
As a BWFJ member and staff organizer Joan was skilled at helping to organize the activities of rank and file workers in all of BWFJ’s grassroots campaigns including the Workers Want Fairness Campaign, the Organize the South Solidarity Tours, the Imperial Foods Fire Organizing for Justice campaign in Hamlet, NC and many others. Joan also represented the BWFJ and the Schlage workers in the Organize the South West Coast 
Solidarity Tour to California and Tecate, Mexico in 1990.
In the late 1990s, Joan was hired to the organizing staff of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) national union helping to organize campaigns in Baltimore and other UE national campaigns.
Joan traveled extensively as a BWFJ member and organizer, making international trips to Cuba and Mexico. She was assistant organizer in the BWFJ International Working Women’s Conference Against Patriarchy held in Atlanta Georgia in 2003. More than 100 women workers gathered in Atlanta from the US South, nation-wide from New York, Washington, DC, and California and from Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Canada, France, Germany, and England. 
At the conference banquet, Joan took the honor of presenting a Plaque of Recognition for a beloved activist of COSATU, South Africa’s renowned national trade union federation, who had recently died in a car accident back in South Africa. The activist, Dorothy Mugaloo was COSATU’s first National Women’s Coordinator against patriarchy. She] was hosted by Joan, visiting area churches, communities, and meeting with workers as she visited Rocky Mount the year before (2002) on a national tour of the United States.
Joan was beloved by everyone who knew or met her. She demonstrated a special connection to rank and file workers whenever she met them. She was a warm and loving friend, comrade, and leader….A SHINING STAR …
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