18. The GI Bill of Rights extended to all American Veterans in the 1950s
By 1956, when the original Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, popularly known as the GI Bill of Rights, expired nearly 8 million Americans had availed themselves of some, if not all, of the education benefits available to them. Education benefits were paid out to almost 50% of the eligible veterans. Millions more took advantage of the zero-down payment home mortgage programs, which offered more favorable terms for new construction, creating a building boom for the construction industry. The GI Bill was in essence an extraordinarily large stimulus package benefiting veterans, their families, industry, and higher education. But it was not administered fairly across the board. Out of 67,000 mortgages under the GI Bill in New York and New Jersey in the early 1950s, fewer than 100 were taken out by Black veterans. They simply couldn’t find builders who would sell to them.
Black veterans also found discrimination when applying to colleges and universities, often applying for benefits only to be denied enrollment in the institution. In the South, applicants for benefits for both mortgages and education discovered the bill had been written to accommodate the Jim Crow laws of the South, and segregation prevented many Black veterans from participating. Not until the Civil Rights Movement of the late 1950s and the 1960s were southern institutions of higher learning compelled to accept qualified Black students. In the 1950s, the doctrine of “separate but equal” prevailed, and the rights of almost 80% of Black veterans were denied by the prevailing racist policies. Technically, nothing prevented them from applying for their benefits. Being able to use them was another matter entirely. It was one of the many sad truths of the 1950s, buried in the myths of that decade being one of a better America.
