June 22, 1944: President Franklin D. Roosevelt takes his 2nd-most important action of the month. Sixteen days after giving the okay for the D-Day invasion, he signs the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, a.k.a. the G.I. Bill.
FDR was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War I, and saw how returning servicemen found that their jobs and homes had been given to others, leading to a recession so bad that it has often been called a depression, though it didn't last nearly as long as the one that hit in 1929 and led to his 1st election as President. He also didn't want a repeat of the Bonus Army controversy of 1932. He wanted an easier readjustment for the veterans returning from World War II, and he wanted it in place before they came back.
Benefits included housing loans, low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans to start a business or a farm, one year of unemployment compensation, and free college.
And so, all over America, hundreds of thousands of people went from ghetto apartments (The word "ghetto" was originally applied to the Jewish neighborhood of medieval Rome, so it is not a purely African-American term) to houses in better parts of their cities, or to the suburbs, making the growth of places like Long Island, New Jersey and Southern California possible.
This had 2 downsides: The people who moved into those slums were not veterans, and were not upwardly mobile, and the neighborhoods got worse; and it made it harder for baseball fans to get to the inner-city ballparks, leading to teams moving (Boston, Philadelphia and St. Louis all went from 2 teams to 1 between March 1953 and October 1954, and New York lost the Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers 3 years after that) and other teams building new stadiums on the edges of cities (New York's Shea Stadium being an example of this) or in the suburbs (like Metropolitan Stadium outside Minneapolis).
The college access for veterans cannot be underestimated. By 1956, 7.8 million veterans had used the G.I. Bill for educational purposes. As much as the housing boom helped by the G.I. Bill, it created the great postwar middle class.
The Bill applied to black veterans as well as white ones. FDR got that passed in spite of whatever opposition he may have received from Southern Congressmen. Many of those black veterans used the G.I. Bill to go to what are now called "historically black colleges and universities" (HBCUs). Many of them became pivotal figures in the Civil Rights Movement.
FDR gets criticized for not doing enough for civil rights. His greatest contribution to it may have been inadvertent: If not for the G.I. Bill creating black lawyers and other activists, the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s might not have happened for another generation.
The G.I. Bill's college provisions were not limited to American colleges. My grandfather's brother, Aaron Goldberg, stayed in France after the war, and attended the University of Paris, a.k.a. the Sorbonne. While there, he got married. Uncle Aaron and Aunt Catherine came to America, and were married for 44 years.
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June 22, 1944 was Thursday. These baseball games were played that day:
* The New York Yankees beat the Washington Senators, 4-0 at Yankee Stadium. Bill Zuber pitched a 4-hit shutout, and Bud Metheny hit a home run.
* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat their arch-rivals, the New York Giants, 10-3 at Ebbets Field. Augie Galan and Mickey Owen each had 3 RBIs. Mel Ott, by this point also the manager of the Giants, went 2-for-3 with 2 walks and an RBI.
* A doubleheader was split at Braves Field in Boston. The Philadelphia Phillies won the opener, 1-0. Ron Northey went 4-for-6, including winning the game with a home run in the top of the 15th inning. Charley Schanz pitched 9 innings of relief for the Phils, and was the winning pitcher. Al Javery pitched all 15 innings for the Braves, but lost. The Braves led the nightcap 7-0 at the end of 5 innings, but because the opener lasted so long, and Braves Field didn't get lights until 1947, the game was called due to darkness.
* A doubleheader was split at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. (It was renamed Connie Mack Stadium in 1953.) The Boston Red Sox won the opener, 5-4. Pete Fox singled home the winning run in the top of the 12th inning. The Philadelphia Athletics won the nightcap, 3-2.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates swept the Cincinnati Reds in a doubleheader, 9-4 and 7-4 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.
* The Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians, 4-3 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (It was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.)
* And the Chicago White Sox beat the St. Louis Browns, 10-3 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. (It was renamed Busch Stadium in 1953.)
* And arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals, were rained out at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The game was rescheduled as part of a doubleheader on September 15. The Cubs won the 1st game, 2-1. The Cards won the 2nd game, 3-2. Stan Musial was injured, and did not play in either game, although he returned for the World Series, when the Cardinals beat the Browns, in the Browns' only World Series appearance.
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