G.I. Bill of Rights

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.

Act of June 22, 1944 [Servicemen’s Readjustment Act [G.I. Bill of Rights]]
National Archives, General Records of the United States Government

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.

This “Featured Documents” exhibit was 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

Title IX
An Act of June 23, 1972, Public Law 92-318, 86 STAT 235, to Amend the Higher Education Act of 1965, the Vocational Educational Act of 1963, the General Education Provisions Act (Creating a National Foundation for Postsecondary Education and a National Institute of Education), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Public Law 874, Eighty-First Congress, and Related Acts, ...
Court-Martial record of Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin, March 10, 1778.
On March 10, 1778, Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin became the first U.S. soldier court-martialed for “attempting to commit sodomy” with another soldier. His sentence was to be literally drummed out of the Continental Army by its regiments’ fifes and drums. Enslin was told “never to return.” More than 230 years after Enslin’s court martial, gay men, lesbians, ...
Indictment for illegal voting, 1872
Susan B. Anthony devoted more than fifty years of her life to the cause of woman suffrage. After casting her ballot in the 1872 Presidential election in her hometown of Rochester, New York, she was arrested, indicted, tried, and convicted for voting illegally. At her two-day trial in June 1873, which she later described as "the greatest judicial outrage ...
Sylvia Mendez and the Struggle for Mexican American Civil Rights
Friday, September 13, 2024 - Wednesday, October 2, 2024East Rotunda Gallery Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez moved to Orange County, California, with their children Sylvia, Gonzalo Jr., and Jerome in 1944. When they tried to enroll in the majority-white school near their home, they were instead sent to a segregated school for Hispanic students. The Mendez family filed a ...
A President Resigns – 50 Years Later
Thursday, August 1, 2024 - Thursday, September 12, 2024East Rotunda Gallery “I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first.” –Richard M. Nixon, August 8, 1974 During the night of June 17, 1972, five ...