How the GI Bill Shut Out Black Americans

The GI Bill fueled America’s prosperity — but for Black families, it deepened inequality. I'll explain the racist design of the GI bill and what its connection is to the racial wealth gap.

Following the money, we can see how a single policy helped shape the economic divide we still live with today.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome back. I'm your host, Marie Beacham, and
for today's episode, we will be continuing this discussion of
black veterans black military service by talking about the GI Bill,
because that didn't come up at all in the previous episode.
This is a chapter of history that everybody knows just
a little bit about. You know, we all know the

(00:32):
one sentenced spiel on the GI Bill, what it was,
why it was implemented, and what the impacts were. But
for many people, that history lesson didn't go as deep
as talking about the disparities, how black veterans saw fewer
benefits and how that was a direct byproduct of discrimination. Now, conversely,

(00:55):
some people today argue that the GI Bill should not
be seen as a discret minatory thing, but rather as
something that was as good as it could have been
in a discriminatory Jim Crow environment, And we'll take a
look at that argument as well. But first let's just
set the stage and talk about what the GI Bill
was for veterans overall. Pulling from the National Archives, the

(01:19):
GI Bill was signed into law by President Franklin D.
Roosevelt on June twenty second, nineteen forty four. We call
it the GI Bill, but it was officially called the
Serviceman's Readjustment Act, and it provided World War II veterans
with funds for college, education, unemployment, insurance, and housing. Those
were the big ones, especially education and housing. It made

(01:44):
it so that millions of veterans could go to college
and buy homes. How did we arrive at this massive bill?
Well and I quote. While World War II was still
being fought, the Department of Labor estimated that after the war,
fifteen million men and women who had been serving would
be unemployed. So they didn't want to see a post

(02:07):
war depression brought on by widespread unemployment, and they made
a plan. An agency at the White House in nineteen
forty three recommended a series of programs for education and training,
and that led to what became the Serviceman's Readjustment Act,
or the GI Bill. It unanimously passed both chambers of
Congress in the spring of nineteen forty four, and it

(02:29):
was signed into law just days after the D Day
invasion of Normandy. As for the effects of the GI Bill,
if it really took root, if it really shaped American
history and helped stave off that post war depression, here's
the stats and I quote. Within the following seven years,
approximately eight million veterans received educational benefits under the Act.

(02:54):
The number of degrees awarded by US colleges and universities
more than doubled between nineteen five forty and nineteen fifty.
By nineteen fifty six, when the Gibill expired, the education
and training portion dispersed fourteen point five billion dollars to veterans.
But by nineteen fifty five, four point three million home

(03:15):
loans had been granted, with a total face value of
thirty three billion dollars, So fourteen point five billion dollars
to veterans in education and thirty three billion dollars in housing.
It was of a huge cost, but it was defended
because the VA said, Hey, even if it costs US
in the billions, by lifting the economy, there will be

(03:37):
an increase in federal income tax and that will pay
for the cost of the bill. So the spending was justified.
It would just help the American middle class, it would
help veterans, and really, after World War One, they didn't
want to see veterans who are returning from war just
to be completely destitute. It was set at the time

(03:58):
that quote America Slkins determined that this time, the men
who fought for their country would find their place in
it when they returned, And it seems that that's what happened,
except not for black men. History dot Com explains quote,
while the GI Bill's language did not specifically exclude African
American veterans from its benefits, it was structured in a

(04:21):
way that ultimately shut doors for the one point two
million black veterans who had bravely served their country during
World War II in segregated ranks. So we'll start by
talking about how they managed to draft a bill that
didn't explicitly exclude African Americans but effectively did. Then we'll
talk about the impacts on education, the impacts on housing,

(04:43):
and engage with this modern day debate where, for example,
one article says, no, the GI Bill did not make
racial inequality worse. Will make sense of the different perspectives
on this, and hopefully by talking about the GI Bill,
it'll shade in some of the pictures some of the
history I had to skip in the previous episode for
the sake of time. In that episode, I'm talking about

(05:05):
black veterans, black military service, how it is so admirable
that millions of black Americans were willing to fight for
a country that didn't fight for them. And I know,
I even said that phrase in the episode a million
times because I want you to remember it. I want
you to remember that concept. But I don't want to
just leave it at an idyllic, whitewashed picture of saying
how sweet, how beautiful. It worked out perfectly, no issues

(05:30):
or problems arose, ever, because that's not the full story.
So let's talk about the GI Bill specifically. If Black
Americans weren't formally excluded from the benefits of the GI Bill,
how is it that they were informally excluded. I read
about this from many sources, and all of them kept
pointing to the same Mississippi Congressman John Rankin. He played

(05:53):
a big role in drafting the bill, and he was
known for his racism, unapologized, unrefined, blatant, outright racism. Rankin
took issue with black Americans overall, and he saw how
black military service posed a threat to his campaign. If
black people were serving in the military, then maybe black

(06:14):
people were deserving a civil rights Maybe they were civilized,
maybe they were competent, Maybe they were all of these
things that he was insistent they weren't. He said that
the issue with black people in the military was that
their service would quote bring the social millennium, make him
the peer of the white man, and place him on

(06:37):
terms of social and political equality with the members of
the Caucasian race. In other words, black soldiers might come
to believe that their deserving of equal rights. This was
a huge problem in Rankin's eyes. Here's how history dot
com explains what happens next and I quote. When lawmakers

(06:57):
began drafting the GI Bill, some Southern Democrats feared that
returning black veterans would use public sympathy to advocate against
Jim Crow laws. So to make sure that the GI
Bill largely benefited white people, the Southern Democrats drew on
tactics they had previously used to ensure that the new
deal helped his few black people as possible. During the

(07:18):
drafting of the law, the chair of the House Veterans Committee,
Mississippi Congressman John Rankin, played hardball and insisted that the
program be administered by individual states instead of the federal government.
He got his way. To understand Rankin's politics, overall, it's
worth mentioning that he defended segregation, opposed inter racial marriage,

(07:42):
and an even proposed legislation to confine then deport every
person with Japanese heritage during World War II. Rankin knew
that by making it a state by state thing rather
than a federal law, there would be a lot more
wiggle room for the white people who are holding the
keys and holding the purse strings to do as they

(08:03):
please in doling out the GI Bill's benefits. And what
we see is that on all of the different fronts
the benefits were doled out inequitably. Here are a few
of the ways that that happened. First of all, if
you were given a dishonorable discharge, then you were not
eligible for the benefits of the GI Bill. At the time,

(08:24):
this was often referred to as getting a blue slip,
because the slip of paper of a dishonorable discharge was blue.
Makes sense, dishonorable discharge, it's like getting fired from your job.
You don't get the retirement package. If you get fired.
In the same way, if you get booted dishonorably, you
don't get the retirement package. You don't get the GI Bill. Now,
the issue with dishonorable discharges was that it was the

(08:47):
nineteen forties and black people experienced a lot of prejudice.
Black people were discriminated against, and the terms for a
dishonorable discharge often came down to issues of character. It
wasn't explicitly outlined. They didn't actually need to have a
clear violation. If you were dishonorably discharged, you were dishonorably discharged.

(09:10):
So of the fifty thousand people in the military who
were dishonorably discharged, the largest group, surprised to no one,
was black men. That's one way that a disproportionate number
of black people who served in the military were shut
out of the GI Bill. Then there's also just stories
of simple intimidation. Many black veterans would be attacked if

(09:33):
they were in uniform. There's the famous story of one
black man who had his eyes gouged out. Others had
rocks hurled at them. Others experienced discrimination from the postmasters
who just simply didn't deliver the forms for the GI
Bill to those black veterans so they couldn't receive their
unemployment benefits. So on the scale of extreme violence to

(09:56):
just small acts of prejudice discrimination. Those added up too. Undoubtedly,
the biggest ways that the GI Bill created racial disparities
and widened the racial wealth gap was in its policies
for housing. It seems that it would help all veterans,
even Black Americans, because again Black Americans were not formally

(10:20):
excluded from the bill. It had no clause about racial
discrimination or exclusion for any reason. It was just that
veterans are afforded these benefits. So you would expect that
black veterans would get these same low interest mortgages in
these housing loans, which led to a whole boom in
housing and in wealth. But if you know about housing

(10:41):
and you know about discrimination, I think you know the word.
I'm going to say redlining. So back in the forties,
red lines were literally drawn on maps saying these neighborhoods
are high risk neighborhoods. These people living here get high
interest loans. And segregation was still a thing, and black
people were being shut out of the suburbs. Black people

(11:03):
were shut out of certain neighborhoods. So black people are
pushed out of the good neighborhoods, pushed into the bad neighborhoods,
and then said ah, well, because you're in this bad neighborhood,
we need to give you this bad loan, predatory, high
interest loans that would keep black people in extreme debt
while they're building up very little equity. Many people know

(11:26):
that the racial wealth gap today is that Black Americans
have about fifteen percent of the wealth that white Americans do.
A little bit ago it was that black Americans have
a tenth of the wealth. But the gap has, you know,
come down a little bit. Now black people have fifteen
percent of the wealth that white Americans do. White Americans
have eighty five percent more. But when you hear that,

(11:46):
many people go, well, that doesn't make sense. Do white
Americans make on average one hundred thousand dollars a year
and Black Americans make fifteen thousand dollars a year. That
doesn't seem right, But that's because what you're thinking of
there is income, and income is different than wealth. Wealth
includes what you own. Wealth includes your house. So when

(12:06):
we talk about the income gap, I think that black
Americans make about thirty thousand dollars less per year. That's
still huge, but not nearly as huge as the wealth gap.
So this conversation on redlining and housing discrimination, it plays
a big part in making sense of the wealth gap
and why it is so unfathomably large, and this article

(12:29):
explains quote, the post war housing boom almost entirely excluded
Black Americans, most of whom remained in cities that received
less and less investment from businesses and banks. Though the
GI Bill guaranteed low interest mortgages and other loans, they
were not administered by the VA itself. That's the thing.

(12:50):
Though the GI Bill guaranteed low interest mortgages and loans,
they were not guaranteed by the VA itself, So the
VA could co sign but not actually guarantee the loans,
which in the end gave white run financial institutions free
reign to refuse mortgages and loans to black people. That's
how it works, folks. What claimed to be a guarantee

(13:13):
was not a guarantee after all. And to just drive
home the disparity of this when you take a look
at how many of these VA guaranteed home loans went
to black borrowers versus white borrowers. In nineteen forty seven,
in the state of Mississippi, there were more than thirty
two hundred VA guaranteed home loans. I repeat, more than

(13:33):
three thousand, two hundred of these home loans, and of those,
the number that went to black borrowers, we want to
take a guess two two out of three thousand, two
hundred at a similar ratio in New York and New Jersey,
sixty seven thousand of these mortgages that were insured by

(13:54):
the GI Bill, of sixty seven thousand, less than one
hundred of them went to non white veterans. Housing is
where it's especially clear that the GI Bill just widened inequalities,
because again four point three million home loans total worth
thirty three billion dollars just being handed out. There were

(14:15):
also disparities in education, but these are I think a
little bit less pronounced. Black veterans were more successful in
having education paid for than they were in receiving their
housing loans. However, the big issue was especially for black
veterans in the South, because they were literally not allowed

(14:36):
to go to the white colleges all around them because segregation,
so they could only go to black institutions, and black
institutions were not ready for the huge spike in applicants.
Tens of thousands of veterans had to be turned away
just because these small black colleges and universities were not

(14:57):
ready for the number of black veterans, and also they
were underfunded, they were cramped, they were underprepared for this,
and most of them were unaccredited. So this is where
you wade into the debate where people say the GI
Bill did help black veterans, because if you look at
the statistics, the GI Bill led to an increase in
college attendance for both white and black veterans. And they

(15:20):
point to that and they say, hey, overall, it's an increase.
Plus they point out that about half as many black
veterans had finished high school as white veterans at the
time of World War Two. I think white veterans were
at about forty percent and black veterans about twenty percent
had a high school diploma. So they're starting from this

(15:40):
place of disadvantage. And they say, hey, when you consider
that again, the GI bill, it's limited. It can't be
a miracle worker. It's entering into a place where there's
already inequality, and it can only do so much. The
National Bureau of Economic Research explains, quote, for white eight men,
the combination of World War II service and GI benefits

(16:03):
had substantial positive effects on collegiate attainment, with a gain
of about zero point three years of college and an
increase in college completion of about five percentage points for
black men. However, the results were decidedly different for those
born in the Southern States versus those born elsewhere. The
combination of World War II service and the availability of

(16:23):
GI benefits led to a similar increase in educational attainment
of about zero point four years of college for black
men born outside of the South, but few gains in
collegiate attainment among black men from the South. That's why
the authors of this report quote conclude that the availability
of benefits to black veterans had a substantial and positive
impact on their educational attainment if they were in the North. However,

(16:46):
for those black veterans more likely to be limited to
the South in their collegiate choices, the GI Bill exacerbated,
rather than narrowed, the economic and educational differences between blacks
and whites. It's also relevant black veterans in the South
had a much harder time, and a big part of
this is that white colleges outnumbered black colleges by more

(17:07):
than five to one. More than eighty five percent of
options for higher education in the South was limited to
white people. So when you have a small number of
underfunded black colleges who also can't admit very many students,
you have a lot of qualified black veterans who are
ready to, you know, seize the only benefits that are
actually available to them, because the housing benefits effectively aren't

(17:30):
and many can't. A news outlet called mother Jones reports
that quote. By nineteen forty seven, as many as fifty
thousand qualified black veterans had been turned away. They also
explained that when all is said and done, about twenty
eight percent of white veterans went to college on the
GI bill, so about a third a little less than
a third of white veterans made use of those educational

(17:53):
benefits versus just twelve percent of black veterans, so a
little bit more than a ten a third verse the tenth.
They also report that quote, by the time World War
II veterans hit the age range at which wealth typically peaks,
the median net worth of black veteran households was one
hundred thousand dollars less than that of white veteran households. Now,

(18:17):
I'm getting into all of those statistics, all the nitty gritty,
because I want to talk about the argument against the
argument that says, if we're really going to act like
the GI Bill is a bad thing, then we're just
hopping on the bandwagon and we haven't told a fair
and true story. So in the article, No, the GI

(18:37):
Bill did not make racial inequality worse by Paul Prescott,
he's talking about how in recent years, I think it
was twenty twenty three, some people came together and they
put forth this proposal that we should now be compensating
direct descendants of World War II veterans who were black
and who didn't receive the benefits of the GI Bill.

(19:00):
Some senators rallied around this, and it did not pass.
It did not happen. But in this article he's explaining, Hey,
the GI Bill actually did benefit black veterans the first
time around. And I think that we've told an overly
simplified story in saying that black veterans got the short
end of the stick. And I just want to share
his perspective on that. Some of his points I think

(19:22):
are good. Some of them I don't think are as strong, honestly,
But here's what Prescott writes, The GI Bill was far
more nuanced and positive than many critics suggest. Black veterans'
stories are documented in Suzanne Meddler's work, including her book
Soldiers to Citizens, The GI Bill and the Making of

(19:43):
the Greatest Generation, and her article specifically about Black veterans,
The only good thing was the GI Bill. And this
is where he explains by the end of World War II,
only seventeen percent of black soldiers had graduated from high
school compared to forty one percent of white soldiers. Clearly,
black veterans were not as well positioned to use the
benefits for college education as their white counterparts. He also says,

(20:06):
when taking into account the full range of GI Bill benefits,
black veterans actually made use of them at a higher
rate than white veterans. A nineteen fifty Veterans Affair study
found that forty nine percent of non white veterans had
used the benefits compared to forty three percent of white veterans. Surprisingly,
black veteran usage was higher even in the Jim Crows South.

(20:26):
Fifty six percent of non white Southern veterans had used
the GI Bill by nineteen fifty, compared to fifty percent
of white veterans. So these are important facts. Especially about
whether the veterans were ready for college by the time
they returned, and that would affect whether they could make
use of the benefits. But I think the thing that's
missing here is just the general fact of what we

(20:47):
said before. Sure, a slightly larger percentage of black veterans
used the GI benefits, but they were denied on housing,
which is clearly the biggest builder of wealth inarguably, and
we can say that they had similar rates of seeking
these educational benefits, but they couldn't access accredited institutions because

(21:08):
in the South, all of the institutions that were open
to white people were only open to white people, and
a small number of underfunded colleges were open to black people.
So to say that six percent more black veterans actually
used the GI bill than white veterans, I feel like
we're kind of grasping at straws. I actually really appreciate

(21:29):
the perspective that we should be nuanced and not just
say this was all around terrible and this did no good.
He's trying to point out it did some good for
black veterans, And he even says the reason why he
wants to talk about appreciating the GI bills usage among
black veterans is because quote the program's large scale success

(21:49):
should give us hope that governance for the public good
is possible for all working people, regardless of their race.
I think that's a good message, but I think he
might be minimizing the obstacles and hinderances a bit too much.
So like he acknowledges the fact that black colleges and
black higher education institutions weren't ready for the influx of applicants,

(22:13):
and he kind of acknowledges that, and then he says, nevertheless,
while the GI Bill did not overturn educational inequality, it
did dramatically increase opportunities for African Americans. And that is true,
but I don't think it's true enough. I'm all for nuance,
but even with a nuanced picture, when we land at

(22:33):
was this a net good? Was this a net bad?
I agree that it was a net good for black veterans,
but it was a far, far greater net good for
white veterans, to the tune of like thirty to forty
fifty billion dollars that black veterans didn't see. And when
white veterans were receiving such a boost, such a helping

(22:56):
hand built up the white middle class, built up generational wealth,
is that they could pass down to their children and
all of that. When white America saw such great gains,
then white America was saying, see, the economy is good,
we're working, we have wealth, we have homes, we have
the American dream, we have the white picket fence. If
you guys don't, must be something you're doing wrong. And

(23:19):
I think it's fair to say that a good little
fraction of those differences can be traced back to racial
discrimination as it pertains to the GI Bill. Now, one
thing that I really appreciated about this article is he
explains how black veterans became especially politically involved, even compared
to Black Americans who never served in the military. And

(23:41):
this is something that came up in the previous episode,
where black veterans had this collective feeling that, Okay, I
have done too much for my country to not demand
equal rights, prescott rights. After the war, black veterans encountered
the discriminatory job market and social system. They I knew
from their GI Bill experience that they had the right

(24:03):
to be treated on equal terms to other Americans. My
one little gripe with that quote is. I don't think
it's from their GI Bill experience. I don't think they
were like, I got equal access to the GI Bill,
and therefore this is why we know equality. I think
it was, you know, even the quotes I read in
the previous episode, they experienced such terrible racism and discrimination
that they said, I'm serving my country. I've earned my stripes.

(24:26):
I better earn the respect of larger society. We need
to fight for equal rights. So I don't think that
they were inspired to fight for equal rights because they
had received some equality with the GI Bill. I think
they were inspired to fight for equal rights because they
hadn't received equal rights. That's my editorial perspective. But still
I agree with then the point he makes following this.

(24:48):
He talks about how black veterans who used the GI
Bill were overrepresented in politics, in activism in the civil
rights movement because they were going out in greater numbers
to push free equality. And I quote, between nineteen sixty
five and nineteen seventy nine, during the height of new
local black governing regimes, thirty one percent of black veterans

(25:10):
who used the GI Bill were involved in local government,
compared to four percent of black people who didn't use
the GI bill thirty one percent versus four percent. I
think it's really interesting to examine the relationship between black
people who served in the military and then black people
who were particularly involved in the civil rights movement and

(25:31):
in local government and just politically involved in general. That's
kind of why I wanted to talk about the GI bill.
I think that the GI Bill, I'm convinced plays some
role in the racial wealth gap today. It would be
two broad strokes to say that it all boils down
to the GI Bill. I'm not saying that, But the

(25:52):
GI Bill is key to housing and how white people
acquired north of thirty billion dollars in wealth in housing
from assistance with the gibill, and black veterans and other
non white veterans didn't receive those same benefits, and that
could have an effect. And housing is generational wealth, and

(26:15):
so therefore generational wealth was just concentrated in the white
community and not other communities. I think all of those
are logical steps. Again, don't want to overstate it. Don't
want to come on here and in every podcast episode
say this is the one reason why we see inequality today.
But I do hope to examine just different pockets of

(26:38):
history and be able to say, Okay, let's see how
that contributed, and how that contributed, and how that contributed. Lastly,
I must say that as I was researching this, I
just couldn't help but think about this idea of getting handouts.
So much of the political rhetoric in the last decade,

(26:58):
couple decades century, I don't know, you decide, has been
about how black people aren't working hard enough, aren't participating
in the meritocracy that is America, and instead they're just
expecting handouts, asking for handouts, asking for welfare, asking for
social safety nets, instead of doing what white Americans did,

(27:22):
which is get out there and work hard. All of
my research on the GI Bill, it's a big handout.
Objectively speaking, that's what it was. And I don't even
mean that white veterans shouldn't have gotten that handout. I
just mean that white veterans shouldn't have been the only
ones to get that handout. I recently was researching black

(27:42):
farming and black land loss because I'm writing an article
about that, and there was a lawsuit. You might know
of it. It's from the nineties, And then again in
twenty ten. It's called Pigvird versus Glickman. It was the
largest civil rights settlement in history. The first settlement was
for one billion dollars to tens of thousands of black farmers,

(28:02):
and then the second settlement was another one point twenty
five billion dollars to again tens of thousands of black farmers,
and many conservatives decried it as a handout. They said, oh,
my goodness, we're still giving black people handouts in the
year twenty ten. My goodness, when are they ever going
to learn? When are they ever going to work for

(28:24):
their money? When are they ever gonna do what all
the rest of us did and roll up their sleeves
and earn the American dream? But how did we get there?
A settlement of over two billion dollars well proven racial
discrimination for a whole century from the United States Department
of Agriculture the USDA against black farmers. Systemic discrimination in

(28:46):
black farming had been proven since nineteen sixty five, and
it just continued, continued, continued until this nineteen ninety nine
class action lawsuit. And then when the lawsuit happens, and
black farmers who have lost out on millions of dollars
over the core of decades of being discriminated against. They
each got payouts of for many of them, fifty thousand dollars.

(29:07):
That little fifty thousand dollars was just torn to shreds.
Called they're getting handouts and they're getting this is fifty
thousand dollars decades worth of wealth that they missed out on. No,
it's nothing close to that for each individual farmer. It's
just a small fraction of what they lost directly because
of racial discrimination. In that case. Keeps coming to my

(29:28):
mind as we're talking about the GI Bill and just
how these different handouts. The GI Bill, which is just
clearly a positive handout to help booy the American economy
versus Pigford versus Glickman, a settlement over proven discrimination, just
torn to shreds. I just, I don't know. I think
it invites nuance on the conversation of I just what

(29:51):
am I saying here. I'm saying that I've never been
a person who is for reparations. I've never talked about
operations on the podcast because I'm not pro reparations, because
I'm not pro any particular policy for reparations. It's just
I have yet to be convinced, and a lot of
the people who are pro reparations, I just kind of

(30:12):
don't agree with their proposals for how to go about it.
And so what I'm saying here is not like just
a loose toss like we should do reparations. Maybe I
could do an episode on reparations if you want to
hear my really complicated back and forth takes. But I
think the reason that that conversation is still open, and

(30:32):
the reason that we're still always discussing how the black
community might benefit from particular support is because throughout history,
and throughout the last century and the century before and
the century before and the century before, black people have
been excluded from many valuable, game changing history making handouts.

(30:56):
But when it goes to white people, we don't really
call them handouts. We just call them genius, helpful policies
that saved the economy. Case in point, the GI Bill.
I hope I could teach you a little bit about
that chapter in history so you can be more educated
and be able to speak to the GI Bill and
how it affected the past and how its effects might

(31:17):
have reverberated into the present. Thanks so much for listening.
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(31:38):
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(31:58):
Thanks for listening. Until next time.