American Legion

History

The American Legion was established in Paris, France, on March 15 to 17, 1919, by a thousand commissioned officers and enlisted men, delegates from all the units of the American Expeditionary Forces to an organization caucus meeting, which adopted a tentative constitution and selected the name "American Legion".

Civil war veteran groups

The aftermath of two American wars in the second half of the 19th century had seen the formation of several ex-soldiers' organizations. Former Union Army soldiers of the American Civil War of 1861–65 established a fraternal organization, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), while their Southern counterparts formed the United Confederate Veterans (UCV). Both organizations emerged as powerful political entities, with the GAR serving as a mainstay of the Republican Party, which controlled the presidency from the Civil War through William Howard Taft's administration except during Grover Cleveland's two terms in office.

In Southern politics, the UCV maintained an even more dominant position as a bulwark of the Democratic Party, which dominated there. The conclusion of the brief Spanish–American conflict of 1898 ushered in another soldiers' organization, the American Veterans of Foreign Service, known today as the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (VFW).

1918 and founding posts

With the end of World War I in November 1918, some American officers who had participated in the conflict began to think about creating a similar organization for the two million men who had been on European duty. The need for an organization for former members of the AEF was pressing and immediate. With the war at an end, hundreds of thousands of impatient draftees found themselves trapped in France and pining for home, certain only that untold weeks or months lay ahead of them before their return would be logistically possible. Morale plummeted. Cautionary voices were raised about an apparent correlation between disaffected and discharged troops and the Bolshevik uprisings in Russia, Finland, Germany, and Hungary.

This situation was a particular matter of concern to Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt Jr., President Theodore Roosevelt's eldest son. One day in January 1919, he had a discussion at General Headquarters with the mobilized National Guard officer George A. White, a former newspaper editor at the Portland Oregonian. After long discussion, he suggested the immediate establishment of a new servicemen's organization including all AEF members as well as those soldiers who remained stateside as members of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps during the war without having been shipped abroad. Roosevelt and White advocated ceaselessly for this proposal until they found sufficient support at headquarters to move forward with the plan. General John J. Pershing issued orders to a group of 20 non-career officers to report to the YMCA in Paris on February 15, 1919. Roosevelt had personally selected these men. They were joined by a number of regular Army officers Pershing selected.

The session of reserve and regular officers was instructed to provide a set of laws to curb the problem of declining morale. After three days, the officers presented a series of proposals, including eliminating restrictive regulations, organizing additional athletic and recreational events, and expanding leave time and entertainment programs. At the end of the first day, the officers retired to the Inter-Allied Officers Club, a converted home across the street from the YMCA building. There, Roosevelt told them of his proposal for a new veterans' society. Most of those present were rapidly won to Roosevelt's plan. The officers decided to make all their actions provisional until an elected convention of delegates could convene and did not predetermine a program for the unnamed veterans organization. Instead, they chose to expand their number with a large preliminary meeting, to consist of an equal number of elected delegates to represent both enlisted men and commissioned officers.

Expansion in 1920s

The Legion was very active in the 1920s. The organization was formally nonpartisan, endorsing no political party. Instead the group worked to the spread of the ideology of Americanism and acted as a lobbying organization on behalf of issues of importance to veterans, with particular emphasis on winning a "soldier's bonus" payment from the government. Led by top lobbyist Colonel John Thomas Taylor, it helped secure passage in 1924 over presidential veto of The World War Adjusted Compensation Act, or Bonus Act. The law granted a life insurance policy to veterans of military service in World War I. The actual payout was promised for 1945, but veterans would get a certificate immediately and they could borrow against it from banks.

The Legion also served a strong social function, building and buying "clubhouses" in communities across America at which its members could gather, reflect, network, and socialize. The Legion was instrumental in the creation of the U.S. Veterans' Bureau, now known as the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Legion also created its own American Legion Baseball Program, hosting national tournaments annually since 1926.

Commander Travers D. Carmen awarded Charles Lindbergh the Legion's first "Distinguished Service Medal" on July 22, 1927. The Legion's national convention was held in Paris in September 1927. A major part of this was a drum and bugle corps competition in which approximately 14,000 members took part.

According to William Pencak: Veterans and their role in American society were extremely controversial in the twenties and thirties, both because of actual issues such as the Bonus or veterans’ support for defense expenditures, but also because critics saw in the American Legion a mirror of the powerful fascist movements in Europe, such as the Nazis in Germany and Fascists in Italy. The comparison reflected fear more than rationality: the Legion had no need or desire to overthrow the government. It was able to achieve nearly all its goals through traditional political channels and strongly supported constitutional authority. Its members did not wear military uniforms (only the familiar caps), elected its officers through democratic means—although as in all associations, an active elite ran the show—and had black, Catholic, and Jewish members. It boasted of Jewish national chaplains and Catholic national commanders. . . .The Legion’s anti-radical program was typical of conservatives throughout American history, who . . . rarely concerned themselves with the rights of union organizers or socialist ‘‘agitators’’ despite the formal constitutional protections.

Great Depression

The American Legion Memorial Bridge in Traverse City, Michigan, was completed in 1930. The Traverse City city commission decided to purchase dedication plaques for $100 at the request of the Legion in 1930.

The Sons of the American Legion formed at the 14th National Convention in Portland, Oregon, on September 12–15, 1932. Membership is limited to the male descendants of members of The American Legion, or deceased individuals who served in the armed forces of the United States during times specified by the Legion.

In the spring of 1933, at the very beginning of his presidency, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to balance the federal budget by sharp reductions in veterans benefits, which constituted one quarter of the federal budget. The Economy Act of 1933 cut disability pensions and established strict new guidelines for proving disabilities. The Legion generally supported the FDR administration and the Act, while the VFW was loudly opposed. After a VFW convention heard speeches denouncing FDR's programs, the Legion invited Roosevelt to speak and he won the convention's support. Nevertheless, the Legion's stance was unpopular with its membership and membership plummeted in 1933 by 20% as 160,000 failed to renew their memberships. The VFW then campaigned for a "Bonus Bill" that would immediately pay World War I veterans what they were due in 1945 under the 1924 World War Adjusted Compensation Act. The Legion's failure to take a similar position allowed the much smaller, less prestigious VFW to rally support while accusing the Legion of ties to the FDR Administration and business interests.

In 1935, the first Boys' State convened in Springfield, Illinois. The Legion's first National High School Oratorical Contest was held in 1938.

After the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, which killed about 480 former servicemen and women, the Legion was very critical of the government and the safety of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration camps. When Col. Taylor testified about the event in front of the House Committee on World War Veterans' Legislation in 1937, he tried to have the Legion's report "Murder at Matecumbe" read into the Congressional Record. He was stopped by Chairman John Elliott Rankin and asked to leave a copy for the committee to review. It was made clear that the copy would not be put into the record.

World War II

In 1942, the Legion adopted the practice of the VFW to become a perpetual organization, rather than die off as its membership aged as that of the Grand Army of the Republic was rapidly doing. The Legion's charter was changed to allow veterans of World War II to join.

Throughout the 1940s, the Legion was active in providing support for veterans and soldiers who fought in World War II. The Legion wrote the original draft of the Veterans Readjustment Act, which became known as the G.I. Bill. The original draft is preserved at the Legion's National Headquarters. It was passed in 1944 by a conservative coalition in Congress that wanted to reach practically all wartime veterans, as opposed to the Roosevelt administration that wanted a much smaller program limited to poverty-stricken veterans. The Legion mobilized its members across the country and secured passage in June 1944. Benefits included low-cost home mortgages, low-interest loans to start a business or buy a farm, cash payments of tuition and living expenses to attend high school, college or vocational/technical school, as well as one year of unemployment compensation. It was available to veterans who had been on active duty during the war years for at least 120 days and had not been dishonorably discharged—exposure to combat was not required. The Legion helped veterans fill out the paperwork and obtain the benefits.

Many posts and departments refused Japanese Americans entry into the Legion, until white officers from the 442nd RCT lobbied on behalf of their troops, gaining charters for the segregated Nisei Post 1183 in Chicago, Illinois, and a joint Chinese and Japanese Cathay Post 185 in Denver, Colorado. California veterans managed to convince a forward-thinking VFW state commander to grant charters for 14 segregated Nisei VFW posts to returning veterans there; however, Washington and Oregon state commanders for both the VFW and the Legion refused, and those veterans were forced to form their own independent Nisei veteran organizations. Post 22 of Hood River, Oregon, even passed a resolution to remove the names of 16 local Japanese-American veterans from its roll of honor. Scathing editorials in The Oregonian and The New York Times eventually caused the post to reverse its course, restoring all the names of Nisei servicemen from Hood River to the wall.

Cold War

As the new veterans returned home, membership soared to 3.3 million in 1946, triple the prewar number. There were another million members in the Women's Auxiliary. Its main objective after the war was to set up universal military service, but it had to settle for selective conscription. The first Boys Nation program was held in 1946.

Late in 1950, at least some local Legion organizations began to support Senator Joe McCarthy, sponsoring his appearance at an "Americanism" rally in Houston. During his speech, the senator falsely claimed there were 205 Communists in the U.S. State Department. The Legion also took a McCarthyist stance on film, threatening to boycott any theater that screened director Edward Dmytryk's Salt to the Devil (also known as Give Us This Day) (1949) because of Dmytryk's status on the blacklist.

At the Legion's 1951 convention, it formally endorsed its nondenominational "Back to God" movement. When launching the program in 1953 with a national television broadcast that included speeches by President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon, the Legion's National Commander Lewis K. Gough said it promoted "regular church attendance, daily family prayer, and the religious training of children."

The Legion's Americanism activities continued through to the 1950s. It promoted the passage of state bills requiring loyalty oaths of school teachers, and supported the activities of anti-Communist newspaper publishers, including William Randolph Hearst, in identifying Communist sympathizers in academic institutions. It was also influential in the creation of state-level legislative investigations into communist or un-American activities, and staged a mock Communist takeover of Mosinee, Wisconsin, that garnered national headlines. Its programs were rejuvenated by increased membership after World War II, and in its 1950 convention called for members of the American Communist Party to be tried for treason. Along with the VFW, it maintained files on supposed Communist sympathizers, and it shared the fruits of its research with government investigators. Local posts picketed films they perceived as anti-American, and the national organization was formally involved in Hollywood's efforts to clear films of such influence. The list of names and organizations the Legion provided to movie studios formed the basis for the Hollywood blacklist, and supported the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee and its predecessors before and during the Cold War. It was unsuccessful in applying pressure to the movie studios when the blacklist began to crumble in the late 1950s.

Foreign affairs

Although the Legion paid very close attention to the threat of domestic communism, it did not pay much attention to foreign affairs before 1945. It ignored the League of Nations, and was hostile to the Washington Naval Conference of 1921 that rolled back the global naval arms race in the 1920s. Pacifism was popular in the 1920s, and Legion locals ridiculed it and sometimes booed the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. During World War II, it accepted the wartime alliance with Stalin against Nazi Germany. As the Cold War emerged in 1946–47, the Legion paid increasing attention to an anti-Soviet foreign policy. Its Counter-Subversive Activities Committee in 1946 began publishing the American Legion Firing Line, a newsletter for members which provides information on communist, fascist, and other extremist groups to its subscribers. It warned members against far-right groups such as the John Birch Society and anti-Semitic groups. By the late 1950s the newsletter became much more interested in foreign affairs.

The Legion's policy resolutions endorsed large-scale defense spending and the deployment of powerful new weapon systems from the hydrogen bomb in the 1950s to Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1980s. Harry Truman was the first Legionnaire to occupy the White House, but he came under Legion attack for waging a limited war in Korea and not following the advice of General Douglas MacArthur in attacking China. By 1961 the Legion outright rejected the policy of containment, and called for the "liberation of the captive peoples in Eastern Europe". Legion members typically hailed Barry Goldwater as their hero, but like Goldwater they rejected the extremism of the John Birch Society. The Legion supported increased intervention in Vietnam, as well as anti-Communist forces in Central America and Afghanistan. The Legion never saw much benefit in the United Nations, and like other conservatives worried about a loss of American sovereignty to international bodies. The collapse of Soviet-style communism in Eastern Europe and in Russia itself saw the Legion looking to new venues for militaristic action. Thus, it praised President George H. W. Bush's intervention in Kuwait against Iraq in 1990. After the September 11 attacks, it vigorously endorsed President George W. Bush's strategy of a global war on terror, and supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Local affairs

On May 30, 1969, the Cabin John Bridge, which carried the Capital Beltway (I-495) across the Potomac River northwest of Washington, was officially renamed to the "American Legion Memorial Bridge" in a ceremony led by Lt. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, director of the U.S. Selective Service System.

In 1976, an outbreak of bacterial pneumonia occurred in a convention of the Legion at The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia. This pneumonia killed 34 people at the convention and later became known as Legionnaires' disease (Legionellosis). The bacterium that causes the illness was later named Legionella.

Open to merchant seamen

In 1988, after over 44 years of opposing U.S. Merchant seamen from receiving benefits under the G.I. Bill, they allowed Merchant seamen to join the American Legion. This followed Merchant seamen being granted limited veterans status by the United States Secretary of the Air Force on January 19, 1988.

Flag issues

After a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Texas v. Johnson), the American Legion launched and funded an unsuccessful campaign to win a constitutional amendment against harming the flag of the United States. The Legion formed the Citizens' Flag Honor Guard and it later became the Citizens Flag Alliance.

Close of the 20th century

In 1993, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts renamed a bridge in the city of Chicopee to the "American Legion Memorial Bridge".

Also in 1993, two members of Garden City, Michigan, Post 396 shared an idea that would bond motorcycle enthusiasts in the Legion from the idea of Chuck Dare and post commander Bill Kaledas, creating the American Legion Riders. Joined by 19 other founding members, the group soon found itself inundated with requests for information about the new group. As a source of information a website was set up, and it continues to be a source of information worldwide. By 2009, the Legion Riders program had grown to over 1,000 chapters and 100,000 members in the United States and overseas.

In a letter to U.S. President Bill Clinton in May 1999, the Legion urged the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Operation Allied Force in Yugoslavia. The National Executive Committee of the Legion met and adopted a resolution unanimously that stated, in part, that they would only support military operations if "Guidelines be established for the mission, including a clear exit strategy" and "That there be support of the mission by the U.S. Congress and the American people."

21st century

The American Legion sponsors Boys State and Girls State, an honor given to one male student and one female student in each high school, with selected individuals participating in a conference to learn about patriotism and government. On a national level, this occurs through Boys Nation and Girls Nation.

In 2006, the Chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), announced that he planned to eliminate the annual congressional hearings for Veterans Service Organizations that was established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In response, National Commander Thomas L. Bock said, "I am extremely disappointed in Chairman Buyer's latest effort to ignore the Veterans Service Organizations. Eliminating annual hearings before a joint session of the Veterans Affairs Committees will lead to continued budgetary shortfalls for VA resulting in veterans being underserved."

The Legion has criticized the ACLU for using the threat of attorney fees to pressure locally elected bodies into removing religion from the public square. As such the Legion states that it "is leading a nationwide effort to combat the secular cleansing of our American heritage", stating that the phrase "separation of church and state" is nowhere mentioned in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution The American Legion released a document titled "In the Footsteps of the Founders – A Guide to Defending American Values" to be available to the citizens of the United States of America. The veteran's organization has done this to curtail religious-establishment cases against the Boy Scouts and the official display of the Ten Commandments and other religious symbols on public property.

In October 2011, National Commander Jimmie L. Foster objected to courts allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military.

On March 25, 2014, the Legion testified before Congress in favor of the bill "To amend title 38, United States Code, to reestablish the Professional Certification and Licensure Advisory Committee of the Department of Veterans Affairs (H.R. 2942; 113th Congress)." They argued that the legislation would "benefit service members, as well as those who eventually employ veterans in civilian work-force easing the placement of qualified veterans in civilian careers, and matching civilian employers with skilled veteran employees." The American Legion argued that this committee was important to the process of matching military certifications with their corresponding civilian ones, smoothing that transition for veterans, and that the committee provided much needed expertise on these matters to the VA. The Legion said that "there is a definite need to resume this independent body with expertise in matters relating to licensing and credentialing which can present new solutions to VA's senior leadership and congressional members as well as other stakeholders."

Headquarters

The national headquarters, informally known as American Legion headquarters, is located on the Indiana World War Memorial Plaza at 700 North Pennsylvania Street in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is the headquarters for the National Commander of The American Legion and also houses the library and archives, the Emil A. Blackmore Museum, Membership, Internal Affairs, Public Relations, and The American Legion magazine's editorial offices. The national headquarters has expanded multiple times since its establishment.

Emblem

The World War I Victory Button on a narrow circular band of blue enamel, containing the words "American Legion" in gold letters, forms the central element of the American Legion Emblem. The Legion emblem or "button" was officially adopted by the National Executive Committee of The American Legion on July 9, 1919.

Eligibility

Membership in the American Legion was originally restricted to soldiers, sailors, and marines who served honorably between April 6, 1917, and November 11, 1918. Eligibility has since been expanded to include personnel who served on active duty in the Armed Forces of the United States or armed forces associated with the U.S., between December 7, 1941, through a date of cessation of hostilities as determined by the federal government, and was an American citizen when they entered that service or continues to serve honorably. U.S. Merchant Mariners who served between December 7, 1941, and December 31, 1946, are also eligible. Honorary, associate, social, or guest memberships in the Legion are not permitted. Members must be eligible through the nature and timing of their military service.

The following is a list of eligibility dates the American Legion uses to determine membership eligibility.

Publication

The official publication, originally known as The American Legion Weekly, launched on July 4, 1919. In 1926, The Legion Weekly reduced the frequency of publication and was renamed The American Legion Monthly. In 1936, the publication's name and volume numbering system changed again, this time to The American Legion.

The American Legion Digital Archive online offers scans of "American Legion magazine, national meeting digests, newsletters, press releases, and other publications published by the national organization."