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During
World War II, our fighting men were deprived of certain advantages
and opportunities. To make up for this, they were given a package of
veterans rights, significantly called a “Bill of Rights.” The major
features to this GI Bill of Rights included subsidies for trade
school or college education, with living expenses provided during
the period of study. Veterans were given special concessions
enabling them to buy homes without cash, with lower interest rates
and easier repayment terms. They could negotiate loans from banks to
launch businesses, using the government as an endorser of any
losses. They received special points to place them ahead in
competition for civil-service jobs. They were provided with medical
care and long-term financial grants if their physical condition had
been impaired by their military service. In addition to these
legally granted rights, a strong social climate for many years
favored the preferential employment of veterans in all walks of
life.
In this way, the nation was compensating the veteran for his time
lost, in school or in his career or in his business. Such
compensatory treatment was approved by the majority of Americans.
Certainly the Negro has been deprived. Few people consider the fact
that, in addition to being enslaved for two centuries, the Negro
was, during all those years, robbed of the wages of his toil. No
amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the
exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down through
the centuries. Not all the wealth of this affluent society could
meet the bill. Yet a price can be placed on unpaid wages. The
ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the
appropriation of the labor of one human being by another. This law
should be in the form of a massive program by the government of
special, compensatory measures which could be regarded as a
settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law.
Such measures would certainly be less expensive than any computation
based on two centuries of unpaid wages and accumulated interest.
I am proposing, therefore, that, just as we granted a GI Bill of
Rights to war veterans, America launch a broad based and gigantic
Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, our veterans of the long siege
of denial. Such a bill could adapt almost every concession given to
the returning soldier without imposing an undue burden on the
economy. A Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged would immediately
transform the conditions of Negro life.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait (1964) |
