The servicemen’s readjustment act was also known as the gi bill of rights.
If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website. Show If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked. On June 22, 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the Servicemen's Readjustment Act. This legislation is better known as the G.I. Bill of Rights. The Servicemen's Readjustment Act provided government assistance to World War II veterans as they returned home upon the termination of their military service. The G.I. Bill provided veterans with low-interest mortgages, unemployment insurance, and financial assistance to attend college. This legislation helped millions of veterans to purchase their first homes. With more people now able to afford homes, the growth of suburbs resulted. Millions of other veterans enrolled in colleges, where the government helped to pay tuition, books, and living expenses at the institutions of the veterans' choice. By 1951, eight million veterans had used G.I. Bill benefits to attend college. The Servicemen's Readjustment Act also provided veterans with unemployment compensation in the amount of twenty dollars per week for up to fifty-two weeks, giving these men the opportunity to return home and to find work. The G.I. Bill dramatically helped World War II veterans. Homeownership and a college education were out of reach of many Americans before passage of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act. For the first time, many working-class men and African Americans had access to these parts of the American dream, including the 839,000 Ohioans who served. Since World War II, the federal government has expanded G.I. Bill benefits to veterans of other conflicts. Originally established to provide services and benefits to the veterans of World War II, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, was signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on June 22, 1944, after it had passed the House and the Senate unanimously. In addition to providing education funds for soldiers returning from the World War, it established hospitals, low cost mortgages, and low interest loans to start business, and one year of unemployment compensation for the veterans. The act put higher education, job training, and home ownership within the reach of millions of World War II veterans. By 1951, nearly 8 million veterans had received educational and training benefits, and 2.4 million had received $13 billion in Federal loans for homes, farms, and businesses. The G.I. Bill was later adjusted to include veterans of the Korean and Vietnam wars; it has since been expanded to all who have served in the Armed Forces. This document was on display in the “Featured Documents” exhibit in the Rotunda Galleries of the National Archives in Washington, DC, June 6 through July 14, 2014. The National Archives Museum’s “Featured Documents” exhibit is made possible in part by the Foundation for the National Archives through the generous support of Toyota. Download a high-resolution version of this document from the National Archives’ Online Public Access Database. Past Featured Records
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