Sit-in hero leaves a 41-year legacy of public service
By JIM SCHLOSSER, Staff Writer

Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2001

GREENSBORO -- Many know him only as Joe McNeil, national civil rights hero who with three other students changed history in 1960 by taking seats at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro and refusing to leave.

Maj. Gen. Joseph McNeil stands beside an exhibit
about the Greensboro sit-ins at the Memphis Civil Rights
Museum in Tennessee. Photo courtesy of U.S. Air Force

Others know him only as Maj. 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.

If events had turned out differently - had McNeil been arrested on Feb. 1, 1960, at the Woolworth's in downtown Greensboro -- he might not be retiring Wednesday night in Washington as a major general, the highest rank a reservist can achieve.

His retirement ceremony, which will include a dinner at the Washington Hilton, comes 41 years and a week after the sit-ins.

In 1960, a criminal record would have been enough for the military to reject a young man from a college ROTC program, such as the one McNeil belonged to at N.C. A&T. The military brass might not have been swayed by arguments that the sit-ins had a lofty moral purpose.

McNeil and the three other A&T freshmen -- Franklin McCain, David Richmond and Ezell Blair Jr. (now known as Jibreel Khazan) -- expected to be arrested that afternoon when they entered the Woolworth's and sat on stools at the lunch counter.

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.

After the sit-ins, the Wilmington native graduated from A&T in 1963 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Air Force. 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. "You need the support of others," McNeil said when asked about the secret of becoming a major general. "That played a big part."

He has many times said something similar about the sit-ins. Although he, McCain, Richmond and Blair went alone that first day to sit at the lunch counter and ask for service, hundreds of other students and adults joined them in the days that followed.

It would take six months before the Woolworth's and the nearby Kress dimestore agreed to integrate their lunch counters.

David Andersen, a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve who flew all over the world with McNeil when they were based out of McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, said he had no idea that McNeil was a civil rights hero until recent years.

"He is just such an unassuming guy," Andersen said.

He only learned about McNeil's past during the 30th anniversary of the sit-ins. Anderson was home in New Jersey watching the evening news when McNeil appeared on the TV screen in an interview about the sit-ins.

The next time he saw McNeil, Andersen congratulated him. He said McNeil shrugged as if he were no big deal.

"He has contributed to his country in many ways," said Andersen, who transferred to Greensboro with Continental in 1994.

McNeil said it's "quite possible" that his Air Force career would have been shut down before it started if the Woolworth's manager had said yes when Greensboro police asked if he wanted to swear out trespassing warrants against the four students. Harris, a Southern-born white man, was livid at the students' audacity but he was a stickler for Woolworth's policy.

That policy, Harris explained many years later, stated that Woolworth's didn't arrest customers, not even for shoplifting. The four students were deemed customers because they had purchased items elsewhere in the store before going to the lunch counter. The restrooms and the lunch counter were the only segregated parts of the store.

Capt. David Kurle, an Air Force public relations officer handling the publicity for McNeil's retirement ceremony, said it would be hard to say if an arrest during the sit-ins would have been sufficient to disqualify McNeil for ROTC.

"Let's just say it wouldn't have helped," Kurle said.

McNeil said he stayed in the Air Force a long time because he enjoyed flying and because "a lot of life is about service."

He sees what he did at the Woolworth's as an act of service, too.

In the famous picture of the Greensboro Four departing the dimestore on Feb. 1 -- the manager closed early because of the A&T students' protest -- the young man wearing the uniform isn't McNeil. That's Franklin McCain, who also was in ROTC.

McCain said later that he didn't wear the uniform as a symbol, but simply because he had ROTC classes that day. McNeil didn't have any military classes scheduled and wore civilian attire.

McNeil and his three colleagues have inspired thousands of young black people in the years since then. Now, some young Air Force officers are drawing inspiration from McNeil's military career.

Kurle, like McNeil, started out in the Air Force as a navigator before switching to a new specialty. Seeing McNeil's two shiny silver stars, he said, "that gives me hope."

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