Signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 22, 1944, the Servicemen's Readjustment Act — universally known as the G.I. Bill — paid college tuition and living stipends for returning veterans, guaranteed low-interest home and small-business loans, and provided a year of unemployment compensation. The Bill sent 2.2 million veterans to college and financed roughly a quarter of all American home purchases in the postwar decade. Its benefits, however, were unevenly available to Black veterans owing to discriminatory administration by state VA offices and private lenders — a limitation now widely acknowledged in historical accounts of the postwar wealth gap.