Gen. Joseph McNeil of Hempstead, N.Y., who has two stars on the shoulder of his U.S. Air Force Reserve blue uniform, which he has worn during peace and war. Few know that the hero and the general are the same man. His retirement ceremony, which will include a dinner at the Washington Hilton, comes 41 years and a week after the sit-ins. As it turned out, store manager Curly Harris refused to serve coffee and pie to McNeil and the others, but he also refused to have the young men arrested when they ignored his demand that they leave. The Greensboro sit-ins sparked protests at segregated lunch counters throughout the South.
Historians consider the Greensboro sit-ins a watershed in the American civil rights movement.
He soon was serving as a navigator on tankers refueling other planes off the Vietnamese coast during the Vietnam War. McNeil left the regular Air Force in 1969 and became an investment banker before joining the Federal Aviation Administration, for which he still works out of the New York area. He remained in the Air Force Reserve and began a steady rise through the command structure. He earned his first star as a brigadier general in 1994 and the second star in 1996. He remains as modest about making general as he has been about his role in the sit-ins.