The Greensboro protests of February 1960 became a defining moment in the American civil rights movement, and David Leinail Richmond was among the North Carolina A&T students present during those events.

Richmond was born on April 20, 1941, in Greensboro, North Carolina. He attended James B. Dudley High School before enrolling at North Carolina A&T, and it was as a student there that he took part in the Greensboro protests. He went on to work as a civil rights advocate, a role that carried the commitments he had acted on during his student years.

The Library of Congress authorized label assigned to him reads "Richmond, David (David Leinail), 1941–1990," a formal record that places him within the historical span of those years and ties his name to the period in which the Greensboro protests occurred. Richmond was a citizen of the United States throughout his life, and his work as a civil rights advocate continued after his time at North Carolina A&T.

In recognition of his contributions, Richmond received the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal. He died on December 7, 1990, in Greensboro — the city where he had been born forty-nine years earlier and where he had been a student during the protests that brought him into the public record.