Special Interest Groups

• WHAT IS ITS MISSION?
• HOW IS IT STRUCTURED?
• PRIMARY FUNCTIONS
• PROGRAMS
• BUDGET INFORMATION
• HISTORY
• CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES
• FUTURE DIRECTIONS
• GROUP RESOURCES
• GROUP PUBLICATIONS
• FAST FACTS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

ESTABLISHED: March 1919
EMPLOYEES: 300
MEMBERS: 2,900,000
PAC: None

Contact Information:
ADDRESS: 700 North Pennsylvania St. P.O. Box 1055 Indianapolis, IN 46206
PHONE: (317) 630-1200
FAX: (317) 630-1223
URL: http://www.legion.org
NATIONAL COMMANDER: Harold L. Miller

WHAT IS ITS MISSION?

The American Legion is a Veterans Service Organization (VSO) founded in 1919 by U.S. veterans of World War I (1914–18). The organization was created to represent veterans' political concerns to the U.S. Congress and to help them obtain health benefits and pensions from the federal government. The American Legion also provided veterans with a chance to gather together and provide emotional support to one another. This camaraderie helps soldiers readjust to civilian life and overcome the stresses of war after returning home. Since 1919 the American Legion has evolved from being a veterans support group to a sophisticated community service organization.

HOW IS IT STRUCTURED?

The American Legion is led by a national commander, the chief administrative officer of the organization. An 11-member committee, the National Officers, assist the national commander with day-to-day management of the Legion. The organization is further divided into 55 departments representing the fifty states as well as the District of Columbia, Mexico, the Philippines, France, and Puerto Rico.

The Legion's departments are responsible for the administration of approximately 15,000 posts around the country that serve as the local chapters for the organization. Post halls are multi-use facilities where members organize for social activities, participate in fund-raisers such as bingo, and collect goods for the needy. Each of the three million members worldwide belongs to a post. Any military veteran who has been honorably discharged or is presently serving and who saw active duty in any twentieth-century conflict involving the U.S. military—from World War I to the conflict in Bosnia—is eligible for membership in the American Legion.

Each post elects delegates to the American Legion Convention to introduce and pass legislative resolutions that determine the organization's positions on political issues, authorize the expenditure of American Legion funds, and direct congressional lobbying efforts. Convention delegates also elect the national commander and the national officers. The convention is held annually in a different U.S. city every year.

The American Legion's Legislative Division

The Legislative Division of the American Legion is responsible for bringing American Legion resolutions to Congress and attempting to persuade Congress to accept those resolutions. It also analyzes congressional bills and their effect on veterans. In addition, Legislative Division staffers prepare reports and arrange guests for House of Representatives and Senate veterans' committees.

Affiliated Associations

The American Legion has three different associations that help it fulfill its mission. The Women's Auxiliary was formed to give women a voice in the organization. Founded in 1920 and with a current membership of 1 million, the Women's Auxiliary mimics the American Legion in operation and structure. There are 12,000 Women's Auxiliary chapters, called units, open to female members of American Legion members' families or to women fulfilling the American Legion's membership criteria.

The Sons of the American Legion was established in 1932 as an organization for the male descendants, stepsons, or adopted sons of members or deceased eligible members of the American Legion. With a membership of approximately 210,000 in 1998, the affiliate participates in community service projects and provides its membership with the opportunity to be trained in the ideals of the American Legion.

In 1994 the American Legion, with a coalition of VSO's and individual citizens, formed the Citizen's Flag Alliance. More independent than the Women's Auxiliary or Sons of the American Legion, the Citizen's Flag Alliance is a group dedicated to making the desecration of the U.S. flag a crime.

PRIMARY FUNCTIONS

Veterans' rights, benefits, and concerns are the American Legion's primary focus. The Legion lobbies Congress on behalf of veterans and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). It runs job training and placement programs for its members. Through its American Legion Magazine and similar forums the organization attempts to raise public consciousness regarding the Gulf War Syndrome, the plight of homeless veterans, and a variety of other political, economic, and social issues affecting U.S. military veterans.

Political power is crucial to implement the American Legion's main objective, which is to represent the interests of veterans to the U.S. government. While the American Legion lobbies Congress, it leverages its large membership base rather than expending large amounts of money to exercise political clout. The thrust of the American Legion's lobbying efforts focus on military and veterans-related issues, which include: increased funding for the VA; support of a constitutional amendment making desecration of the U.S. flag a crime; and support of expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance of European and North American countries.

Aside from advancing veterans' concerns nationally, the American Legion supports a number of community services, many with an emphasis on youth-oriented programs. The organization offers scholarships to qualified relatives of its membership and promotes scholarship contests with patriotic themes.

PROGRAMS

The American Legion has created, developed, and financed many initiatives during its history, some of which were designed to advance the organization's political agenda. Several programs were created for veterans themselves, while others were designed for young people.

American Legion Baseball

American Legion posts across the country have supported the American Legion Baseball League since its establishment in 1925. Created to help young people develop skills, sportsmanship, and physical fitness, the league has enjoyed the participation of more than eight million children since its inception. During the 1997–98 season, American Legion posts sponsored more than 5,000 Legion baseball teams at a cost of $17 million.

Scholarships and Educational Assistance

The American Legion administers several scholarship programs for relatives of American Legion members. One of the most notable is the Samsung American Legion Scholarship. The Korean-based Samsung Corporation established a $5 million endowment to provide scholarships for descendants of U.S. war veterans.

The American Legion protested the Smithsonian Institution's planned exhibit of the Enola Gay, which contained graphic photos and relics from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Veterans feared the exhibit would negatively reflect on the decision to drop the bomb. (Photograph by Ruth Fremson, AP/Wide World Photo)

In addition the American Legion publishes Need a Lift?, a booklet that details scholarships for which veterans and their families might be eligible. This resource also contains information on how to apply for college and financial aid as well as some basic information on colleges and universities located in the United States.

Boys State and Boys Nation

Boys State is a civics education program designed to teach male high school juniors about the workings of state government. Forty-nine departments nationwide run Boys State programs in a variety of different forms; however, all strive to provide young men with an understanding and appreciation of U.S. government from the local and state levels. Those who excel at Boys State are invited to participate in Boys Nation, which educates students about the federal government.

The American Legion Vietnam Rehabilitation Program

Since 1992 the American Legion has developed a humanitarian assistance program for disabled Vietnamese-army veterans. This program raises and donates funds to disabled veterans of Vietnamese nationality for the purposes of job training. Veterans receive this training at a site near Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. This initiative was established by the American Legion as a way of creating a dialogue between the two nations and healing the political and emotional gulf between Vietnam and the United States.

BUDGET INFORMATION

Not made available.

HISTORY

The American Legion was formed in the spring of 1919 by veterans returning home from Europe to the United States from service in World War I. The veterans organized because they realized that they needed a national organization to address the special needs that they had, such as health care for those who were wounded and finding suitable jobs. The Legion recognized the necessity of including family members and created the American Legion's Women Auxiliary for the female family members of Legionnaires.

In 1921 the federal government formed the U.S. Veterans Bureau, which later became the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). This move was in response to the demands of the fledgling American Legion organization, which required a government-sponsored vehicle for administering health care and other benefits to U.S. vets. In 1923 the American Legion's long association with, respect for, and care of the U.S. flag began with the drafting of a protocol for handling the stars and stripes. The protocol, called the Flag Code, would be adopted by Congress in 1942. In 1931 the membership of the American Legion surpassed one million for the first time. In 1935 the first of the organization's Boys States would be held in Springfield, Illinois.

As the United States entered World War II (1939–45), the American Legion recognized there would soon be a new class of veterans who would require the same assistance that those of World War I had required. In 1942 the organization amended its charter to accept veterans of World War II as members. In 1943 an American Legion member drafted a bill that would become known as the GI Bill of Rights. This bill, signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1945, gave veterans low-cost loans for housing and education and improved the quality of veterans' health care. After World War II thousands of returning soldiers took advantage of the benefits awarded them by the GI Bill of Rights by attending college, purchasing their first home, and establishing families.

The Vietnam War presented special challenges to the American Legion. As early as 1966 the Legion began pressing the federal government for the status of those soldiers classified as prisoners of war or missing in action (POW/MIAs). The issue was increasingly politicized due to the difficult relationship between the United States and Vietnam, and its resolution was made nearly impossible.

In 1983 the American Legion began a joint study with Columbia University to determine the effects of exposure to the chemical known as Agent Orange on U.S. veterans of the Vietnam conflict. Agent Orange is a powerful herbicide that was used during the war to kill jungle vegetation and expose the positions of North Vietnamese troops. U.S. soldiers who handled Agent Orange began suffering from mysterious symptoms years after their exposure. The illnesses required special care, and it took the VA years to recognize the effects of Agent Orange.

The American Legion and other VSOs lobbied for years to have the VA changed to a cabinet-level post with special advisory access to the president. In 1989, under President George Bush, the VA was elevated in status to a cabinet-level department. In October of 1995 the American Legion formed an advisory board called the Persian Gulf Task Force to help serve the special health and service needs of veterans of the Gulf War, such as the mysterious Gulf War Syndrome.

CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES

The American Legion takes an active part in lobbying for its position even in controversial issues. The majority of these issues surround the needs of veterans, or the military itself. For example, the American Legion has long been calling for reform of the VA health care system, on which many veterans depend for medical care. The VA, facing a crisis in funding due to budget cuts in the 1990s, was forced to become more selective in the benefits it offered. The American Legion wants to see full benefits restored for all veterans. It proposed a plan, the GI Bill of Health, that would transform the VA into something resembling a private managed care organization, open to all veterans. This restructuring would be costly but the American Legion insists that costs would be offset by revenues generated by new insurance payers that would have new access to the opened system.

Also in the 1990s, the question of whether or not homosexuals should be allowed to serve in the military became a topic of much debate. The American Legion does not believe homosexuals have a right to serve in the Armed Forces. The Legion believes that the homosexual lifestyle is incompatible with service in the military. Pressure from the American Legion and other veterans groups forced President Clinton to back down from his campaign promise of an unqualified end to the military's ban on homosexuals. Clinton's compromise position became known as "Don't ask, don't tell," meaning that recruits entering the military would no longer be asked about their sexual orientation. The Legion has opposed this policy since it was instituted in 1993, believing that allowing homosexuals to join the armed forces compromises the strength of the military, and has lobbied for a return to an outright ban on homosexuals.

The list of rules for proper care of the U.S. flag, the Flag Code, was devised by the American Legion in 1923. The Legion has always been a champion of laws designed to make desecration of the U.S. flag a federal crime. Thus, the organization was dismayed by a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that maintained that altering, and even destroying, the U.S. flag was a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Thus, laws which prevented desecration of the flag were unconstitutional.

After the 1989 Supreme Court ruling, the American Legion and other VSOs began putting pressure on Congress to approve a constitutional amendment prohibiting flag desecration. If passed by both houses of Congress and ratified by the states, such an amendment would become part of the Constitution and eliminate the grounds for the 1989 ruling. Flag protection amendment bills passed in the House several times in the 1990s, but had yet to be successful in the Senate.

Case Study: Smithsonian Institution Enola Gay Exhibit

The Enola Gay is the U.S. airplane that carried and dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, at the conclusion of World War II; it marked the first time an atomic weapon was ever used in warfare. The Hiroshima bomb and the atomic bomb that was dropped a few days later on Nagasaki, Japan, are generally thought to have forced the Japanese to surrender.

The Enola Gay had fallen into disrepair after the war. It was restored to its original condition in the early 1990s, and the Smithsonian planned to display the restored airplane in June of 1995 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war. Museum curators wanted to show the restored plane, but they also wanted to show the effects of the bomb it had dropped. In the first room of the exhibit, the curators planned to display the plane's fuselage alongside photos of her smiling crewmen. After walking past a large photo reproduction of a mushroom cloud, viewers would enter a room filled with graphic photos of the burned victims and charred human remains of the residents of Hiroshima. The proposed exhibit also included personal effects of the residents of Hiroshima.

Reports of the planned exhibit appeared in the media months before it was scheduled to open and veterans groups were incensed. The American Legion believed that the exhibit, with its prominent display of the suffering caused by the bombing, implied that the decision to drop the bomb was wrong. Controversy among historians over whether or not the use of atomic weapons against civilians was necessary or justifiable has long existed; while the bombings clearly resulted in a quick end to the war, they took thousands of civilian lives, and some historians believe that the United States would have defeated Japan, in time, without using atomic bombs. The American Legion and other VSOs believed otherwise, however. They maintained that the atomic bomb spared the Allied Forces an invasion of Japan that would have lasted for years and cost the lives of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of soldiers.

The American Legion joined in a media campaign against the exhibit. Members of the organization wrote editorials assailing the exhibition's curators. Time magazine published a lengthy article discussing the decision to drop the bomb. Members wrote letters threatening to lobby Congress to take away Smithsonian funding. In January of 1995 the Smithsonian's curators, bowing to public pressure, announced that the museum would change the exhibit. The Enola Gay exhibit was turned into a display dedicated to the manufacture and restoration of the airplane itself.

The American Legion approved of this second version of the exhibit, which it felt celebrated the end of the war while avoiding political commentary. Others, including many museum curators, felt that the original display raised legitimate questions which the American Legion successfully censored. Nevertheless, while polls taken near the time of the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed that over half of Americans believed dropping the atomic bomb was unnecessary, veterans' groups were nonetheless able to change the programming of America's most prominent museum.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

As the disproportionately large population of Americans known as Baby Boomers grows older, their demand for medical care will put a heavy strain on the health care system and those organizations that provide health benefits, such as the VA and the American Legion. Economics and population figures may combine to create financial problems for the VA. The American Legion has for many years petitioned the government for changes in the VA and considering the organization's own aging population, this will remain a major concern of the organization in the years to come.

GROUP RESOURCES

The American Legion maintains a 10,000-volume library at its headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is a private library, but staffers answer requests from researchers, students, and others. Individuals interested in contacting the American Legion Library or the American Legion may phone (317) 630-1223 or write to the American Legion, P.O. Box 1055, Indianapolis, IN 46206. On-line visitors may access the American Legion Web site at http://www.legion.org, which contains basic information on the organization and its activities.

GROUP PUBLICATIONS

The American Legion publishes the American Legion monthly magazine; it contains updates on monuments, changes in VA policy, veterans' memorials, and the workings of the organization. The magazine also includes articles and essays about global political events, such as China's takeover of the former British colony of Hong Kong. Recent issues are available for viewing on the Internet at http://www.legion.org/pubs/publica.htm#mag. The American Legion Dispatch is another magazine that the American Legion produces. Containing information on national security and foreign relations issues of interest to American Legion members, it is available for viewing via the World Wide Web at http://www.legion.org/pubs/current/dispatch.htm. The American Legion also publishes Need a Lift?, a scholarship and financial aid guide for veterans and their families. Need a Lift? lists available scholarships, tuition at many universities, and career information. Information on obtaining any of the organization's publications is available by writing to the American Legion, 700 N. Pennsylvania St., P.O. Box 1055, Indianapolis, IN 46206, by calling (317) 630-1200, or by E-mailing at magazine@legion.org.