'Hunter Gray' hunterbadbear@hunterbear.org [marxist]
2014-06-23 10:04:50 UTC
GI BILL AND MINORITY VETS [ HUNTER GRAY 12 / 18 /01]
Posted Initially at RedBadBear:
It's certainly very good indeed to see Niilo Koponen of Alaska [and many
places] out in our Sunny List and posting. A strong personal welcome,
Niilo, not only from me -- but, of course, from Eldri. We're having a drier version of Duluth and Upper Peninsula winter weather here in Idaho -- but I can't find any saunas in Pocatello. Nearest substantial concentrations of Finns are at Butte, Great Falls, etc. We may build our own sweat lodge. Good to see you, Niilo!
I have just a couple of thoughts on the GI Bill. Granted [ for sure and
many times over] that the United States in the post-WW2 situation was
generally not at all hospitable to vets from "minority groups" -- or to many
others, certainly. Racism and ethnocentrism and other social ills were
riding very high. And this was, of course, the increasingly sinister Cold
War period in which reactionary counterattacks [e.g., the viciously
anti-union Taft-Hartley Act] were being levied against all of the works of
the New Deal [including its significant reforms in Indian policy.]
And just one of those venomous thrusts was the Red Scare which
wasted little time flickering in the pine needles before crowning out in
the tree tops, spot-firing, and destroying and consuming to the Four
Directions.
But the GI Bill helped a vast number of vets and their then-present or
future families. Granted that, for many minority vets especially, a vast
number of academic doors were closed. Exclusion via segregation was widespread -- especially in the South and Border areas. Situations were very prevalent [and certainly no fault of the vet, minority or non-minority ] where
educational options were often narrowed to trade schools -- because the
person had often only minimal ed in the lower end of the K-12 context.
But the impact of returning minority vets -- and vets from other
backgrounds, socially sensitized -- played an extremely key and very
positive role in the development of the Civil Rights Movement, Native American and Chicano activism, and vastly more. When they came home, most were not about to accept the orthodox "place" decreed for them by the Stratosphere: the place that's always Down.
Medgar Evers of Mississippi would be a prime
example of someone who would/might never have gotten to college save
for the GI Bill. He couldn't get into Ole Miss or Mississippi
Southern -- but he did get to the all-Black state Alcorn A&M. Others wound
up in private Black colleges like Tougaloo or Rust.
So even though the "White" academic institutions were indeed closed to
Blacks in the South , there were the others: state-controlled Black colleges, private schools -- all of them hideously underfunded. But someone who wanted to -- and a very great number did -- could rustle, with the help of some dedicated faculty, a solid education.
Flagstaff -- Northern Arizona -- is my home town. It held Arizona State,
Flagstaff, which was then extremely small: a few hundred students. Now
it's the huge [to me] Northern Arizona University.
There were many divisions of spoils in Arizona Territory. [Arizona and New
Mexico became states in 1912 -- against the wishes of William Howard Taft
who saw each of them as infused with red radicalism -- Oh, for those days
now!] Prescott got the Territorial Capital which Flagstaff had wanted.
Phoenix had to settle at that point for the state insane asylum and
Flagstaff got only a tiny teacher's college. Then, of course, over time
and demographics and politics, things were considerably rearranged.
In the post-War period, there was a growing trickle and then a stream of
vets entering the college at Flagstaff: Native [mostly Navajo, many Hopi,
some Apache] and Chicanos -- as well as a few Blacks. This was the time and
setting in which a very old and good friend of our family -- Ned A.
Hatathli, Navajo -- took, via the GI Bill, two degrees and
went on to play a signal role in Navajo affairs. It was Ned with his Vision
who founded Navajo Community College [now Dine' College] -- the first of the
now forty or so Indian-controlled higher ed institutions.
Arizona State, Tempe, and even the stuffy University of Arizona, Tucson,
took in ever larger numbers of minority vets: mostly Chicano -- some Native
and Black.
Workingclass vets generally, of course, were helped very substantially by
the GI Bill.
And, for my part, I -- in another era some years after WW2 -- found the
then $110 a month very important. [When it was hiked to $135,
we thought we were in at least a corner of Hog Heaven.] With what I made as
a workingstiff, I could get by -- though occasionally I had to pawn my 30/30
Winchester [$25 to me, with $30 to redeem.]
And we "bought" our first home -- in an all-Black workingclass housing
addition [Biltmore Hills] on the edge of Raleigh, NC -- via my GI Housing
Loan.
The GI Bill has been a solidly positive force for generations. [Too bad it
only comes via War.] Never enough dinero and never as many societal options
as we would like -- but it's given many, many people a foundation from which
to work and build good things.
And, too, if it's blazed the trail for other non-veteran financial aids for
higher ed and vocational students -- especially of those limited means --
the GI Bill is also a solid harbinger of the far, far broader educational
assistance dimension that will have to be one of many integral components of the ultimately inevitable bona fide socialist democracy.
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
Check out our massive social justice website
www.hunterbear.org The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm
See my piece ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE (Mississippi et al.):
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm
See our very full COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
page -- with a great deal of practical material:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm
See my new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book,"
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000 word
introduction by me. This page lists many reviews.
And this book is also an activist's how-to manual:
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm:
(Photos)
Posted Initially at RedBadBear:
It's certainly very good indeed to see Niilo Koponen of Alaska [and many
places] out in our Sunny List and posting. A strong personal welcome,
Niilo, not only from me -- but, of course, from Eldri. We're having a drier version of Duluth and Upper Peninsula winter weather here in Idaho -- but I can't find any saunas in Pocatello. Nearest substantial concentrations of Finns are at Butte, Great Falls, etc. We may build our own sweat lodge. Good to see you, Niilo!
I have just a couple of thoughts on the GI Bill. Granted [ for sure and
many times over] that the United States in the post-WW2 situation was
generally not at all hospitable to vets from "minority groups" -- or to many
others, certainly. Racism and ethnocentrism and other social ills were
riding very high. And this was, of course, the increasingly sinister Cold
War period in which reactionary counterattacks [e.g., the viciously
anti-union Taft-Hartley Act] were being levied against all of the works of
the New Deal [including its significant reforms in Indian policy.]
And just one of those venomous thrusts was the Red Scare which
wasted little time flickering in the pine needles before crowning out in
the tree tops, spot-firing, and destroying and consuming to the Four
Directions.
But the GI Bill helped a vast number of vets and their then-present or
future families. Granted that, for many minority vets especially, a vast
number of academic doors were closed. Exclusion via segregation was widespread -- especially in the South and Border areas. Situations were very prevalent [and certainly no fault of the vet, minority or non-minority ] where
educational options were often narrowed to trade schools -- because the
person had often only minimal ed in the lower end of the K-12 context.
But the impact of returning minority vets -- and vets from other
backgrounds, socially sensitized -- played an extremely key and very
positive role in the development of the Civil Rights Movement, Native American and Chicano activism, and vastly more. When they came home, most were not about to accept the orthodox "place" decreed for them by the Stratosphere: the place that's always Down.
Medgar Evers of Mississippi would be a prime
example of someone who would/might never have gotten to college save
for the GI Bill. He couldn't get into Ole Miss or Mississippi
Southern -- but he did get to the all-Black state Alcorn A&M. Others wound
up in private Black colleges like Tougaloo or Rust.
So even though the "White" academic institutions were indeed closed to
Blacks in the South , there were the others: state-controlled Black colleges, private schools -- all of them hideously underfunded. But someone who wanted to -- and a very great number did -- could rustle, with the help of some dedicated faculty, a solid education.
Flagstaff -- Northern Arizona -- is my home town. It held Arizona State,
Flagstaff, which was then extremely small: a few hundred students. Now
it's the huge [to me] Northern Arizona University.
There were many divisions of spoils in Arizona Territory. [Arizona and New
Mexico became states in 1912 -- against the wishes of William Howard Taft
who saw each of them as infused with red radicalism -- Oh, for those days
now!] Prescott got the Territorial Capital which Flagstaff had wanted.
Phoenix had to settle at that point for the state insane asylum and
Flagstaff got only a tiny teacher's college. Then, of course, over time
and demographics and politics, things were considerably rearranged.
In the post-War period, there was a growing trickle and then a stream of
vets entering the college at Flagstaff: Native [mostly Navajo, many Hopi,
some Apache] and Chicanos -- as well as a few Blacks. This was the time and
setting in which a very old and good friend of our family -- Ned A.
Hatathli, Navajo -- took, via the GI Bill, two degrees and
went on to play a signal role in Navajo affairs. It was Ned with his Vision
who founded Navajo Community College [now Dine' College] -- the first of the
now forty or so Indian-controlled higher ed institutions.
Arizona State, Tempe, and even the stuffy University of Arizona, Tucson,
took in ever larger numbers of minority vets: mostly Chicano -- some Native
and Black.
Workingclass vets generally, of course, were helped very substantially by
the GI Bill.
And, for my part, I -- in another era some years after WW2 -- found the
then $110 a month very important. [When it was hiked to $135,
we thought we were in at least a corner of Hog Heaven.] With what I made as
a workingstiff, I could get by -- though occasionally I had to pawn my 30/30
Winchester [$25 to me, with $30 to redeem.]
And we "bought" our first home -- in an all-Black workingclass housing
addition [Biltmore Hills] on the edge of Raleigh, NC -- via my GI Housing
Loan.
The GI Bill has been a solidly positive force for generations. [Too bad it
only comes via War.] Never enough dinero and never as many societal options
as we would like -- but it's given many, many people a foundation from which
to work and build good things.
And, too, if it's blazed the trail for other non-veteran financial aids for
higher ed and vocational students -- especially of those limited means --
the GI Bill is also a solid harbinger of the far, far broader educational
assistance dimension that will have to be one of many integral components of the ultimately inevitable bona fide socialist democracy.
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
Check out our massive social justice website
www.hunterbear.org The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm
See my piece ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE (Mississippi et al.):
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm
See our very full COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
page -- with a great deal of practical material:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm
See my new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book,"
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000 word
introduction by me. This page lists many reviews.
And this book is also an activist's how-to manual:
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm:
(Photos)