J. E. McNeil, an attorney in Washington, D.C., and a member of Friends Meeting of Washington (FMW), grew up in a working class neighborhood in the Jim Crow South. She worked her way through college and later law school when that was still a possibility. Now culturally if not financially part of the upper middle class with three degrees, she supports the Mary Jane Simpson Scholarship Fund at FMW and the Bell Multicultural High School in Columbia Heights, D.C.