Rep: Black vets’ families owed benefits

BY LEIGH BLANDER

Local social justice and affordable housing advocates are praising Congressman Seth Moulton’s bill to restore GI Bill benefits to surviving Black World War II veterans and their descendants who did not benefit equally after the war due to systemic racism.

“We at the Marblehead Racial Justice Team applaud this effort as an attempt to make up for a historical wrong that perpetrated a legacy of segregation,” said Rev. Jim Bixby with the MRJT. “It is unfortunate that even this kind of legislation is too little too late.

The Black GIs missed out on investment opportunities during our most productive years of economic development, the post-war years. White Americans got to be at the forefront of home ownership and education. Black Americans were left in the back seat.”

The GI Bill was signed into law in 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, offering a range of benefits to veterans, including low-cost mortgages and low-interest loans to start a business or farm, unemployment compensation and education assistance. These loans were regularly denied to Black veterans due to racism at the time.

“In 1947, out of 67,000 VA mortgages in the New York and New Jersey suburbs, less