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• 1 media/Soldiers in WWII.jpg media/Soldiers in WWII.jpg 2024-10-29T15:52:37+00:00 Reparations for Black Veterans 6 image_header 2026-01-25T23:11:40+00:00

  I spoke briefly about the work with Yale Law School and the litigation. It's landmark legislation because it's using internal VA data to try to make the case for repair.
  
  For Black vets, Conley is one veteran, but there are others that are joining the suit. That's becoming a revolution, and litigation is one potential pathway to try to see if we can hold the VA accountable for this history that we know to be true. Courts are what courts are. There's no guarantee that that will be an effective strategy, but it is one worth pursuing.
  
  On the legislative front, there was a bill introduced in the 117th Congress by Congressman Moulton, Congressman Clyburn, and Senator Warnock called the GI Bill Restoration Act. At the most recent estimates is that it would be about a $70-$80 billion effort. It would extend to descendants of Black World War II veterans, of which diminutive numbers got access to this benefit.
  
  You think about in 1948, for example, in the state of Mississippi, over 3,000 home loans were given out to white veterans, less than two went to Black veterans. In the state of northern New Jersey and southern  New York, between 1945-1946, 67,000 loans were given out. Less than 100 went to Black vets. When we talk about the diminutive numbers, we're talking about diminutive, very low numbers of Black vets being able to really access VA home loans.
  
  Even the education benefits at that point, there were very low numbers of academic institutions that were white that admitted Black students. You had a host of HBCUs, but they lacked capacity, so you also had a very diminutive number of Black vets able to access in equal measure the education benefits that were afforded under the GI Bill as well.
  
  The post-9/11 GI Bill seeks to reckon with that history in a more forthright way by allowing descendants to be able to get access to zero [percent interest] VA-backed home loans and education benefits. That has been an evolution. It got reintroduced in this particular Congress, but it's, at this point, just a messaging bill.
  
  What has evolved out of it though, is there's also been some conversations about the fact that perhaps if that bill was passed, it wouldn't survive the muster of judicial review. Thinking about how we might be able to implement some level of redress, there's a bill now called the VA Housing Loan Forever Act that would look to give descendants of any color — but the vast majority would be Black — but veterans who did not use the VA home loan between 1945, and I believe it's 1978, would be able to pass down the VA home loan to multiple descendants. That bill is obviously being worked. The kinks are supposed to be worked out in this Congress with the hope that there might be political momentum to pass something like that in the next Congress.
  
  But the realities of DC and politics and Veterans Affairs and trying to get buy-in, it's a difficult process. Obviously, our desire is to want to see the bill in full, the bill that is the GI Bill Restoration Act, in its entirety, passed. The evidence is so clear that that is the just thing to do.
  
  But I don't think that a lot of folks are necessarily interested in the just conversation, and that's partly because they're not educated. They don't understand the history. They don't understand the layers of obstruction that continue and the difference that that kind of investment could make. People can say, oh, well, ‘$70 billion is a lot of money.’ But, let me remind you that we gave more than that to Ukraine in a year. We're talking about being able to restitute for a decades-long project of intentional race-based obstruction to a benefit that Black families had earned — because they made the ultimate sacrifice and served this country in the same ways and with the same sacrifices that white veterans had done.