American Legion. The American Legion was founded in 1919 by World War I veterans seeking to preserve comradeship fostered in service, to obtain medical care and compensation for the disabled, and to combat postwar radicalism during the Red Scare. It immediately became the largest veterans' organization in U.S. history: membership varied between 600,000 and 1.1 million from 1919 to 1941, and has remained over 2.5 million since 1945. Unlike the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Legion admits all veterans of periods of conflict, regardless of whether they served in a theater of combat. More than 10,000 local posts elect delegates to state and national conventions. The Legion lobbied to create the precursor of the Veterans Administration in 1921 to pay adjusted compensation of the veteran “bonus” ahead of schedule in 1936, and later to provide a G.I. Bill of benefits for World War II veterans.

Domestically, the Legion has been a major force for national defense and against radicalism. A number of posts resorted to vigilante tactics during the Red Scare of 1919 and against industrial unionization in the 1930s. The Legion is known for community service and disaster relief, Legion baseball, and for an interest in patriotic school curricula. Although politically conservative, the organization has always supported representative democracy, welcoming a diverse ethnic and religious membership and embracing no economic programs besides veterans benefits. Its aging members disagreed initially with many of the younger veterans of the Vietnam War.
[See also Veterans: Vietnam War; Veterans: World War I; Veterans: World War II.]

Bibliography

William Pencak , For God and Country: The American Legion, 1919–1941, 1989.
Thomas A. Rumer , The American Legion, 1991.

William Pencak