How African American WWII Veterans Were Scorned By the G.I. Bill
A million African Americans
joined the military during World War II as volunteers or draftees. Another 1.5 million registered for the draft. But when the war was over, many of those servicemen and women failed to receive their fair share of the benefits under the
Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 —the G.I. Bill.
Also known as the G.I. Bill Of Rights, the G.I. Bill provided financial support in the form of cash stipends for schooling, low-interest mortgages, job skills training, low-interest loans, and unemployment benefits.
But many African Americans who served in World War II never saw these benefits. This was especially true in the south, where Jim Crow laws
excluded black students from “white” schools, and poor black colleges struggled to respond to the rise in demand from returning veterans. After World War II, blacks wanting to attend college in the South were restricted to about 100 public and private schools, few of which offered education beyond the baccalaureate and more than a quarter of which were junior colleges, with the highest degree below the B.A.
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Thousands of black veterans were denied admission to colleges, loans for housing and business, and excluded from job-training programs. Programs funded by federal money were directed by local
officials, who especially in the south, drastically
favored white applicants over black.
In 1947, some 70,000 African American veterans
were unable to obtain admission to crowded, under-resourced black colleges. The University of Pennsylvania—one of the least-discriminatory schools at the time—
enrolled only 40 African American students in its 1946 student body of 9,000.
The University of Pennsylvania—one of the least-discriminatory schools at the time—enrolled only 40 African American students in its 1946 student body of 9,000.
The GI bill included support for banks to provide veterans low-cost, zero down-payment home loans across the United States. But of the first 67,000 mortgages secured by the G.I. Bill for returning veterans in New York and northern New Jersey alone,
fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites. The G.I. Bill helped place 6,500 former soldiers in Mississippi on nonfarm jobs by fall of 1947, but while 86 percent of the skilled and semiskilled jobs were filled by whites, 92 percent of the unskilled ones were filled by blacks.
In all, 16 million veterans benefited in various ways from the G.I. Bill. President Bill Clinton
declared it “the best deal ever made by Uncle Sam,” adding that it “helped to unleash a prosperity never before known.”
For white people, that is. The lack of access to a family home meant a long-term loss of wealth for black Americans. A family home purchased in 1946 in a good neighborhood with a strong tax base and solid schools, became financial wealth to pass onto family members, borrow against to start a business, or to send kids to college.
