In the years after World War II, the United States was rocked by immense change. Every aspect of society was altered in some way. There was no one area, geographically or other, left untouched. Illinois, like many other states, both fought against and accepted change after World War II.
One of the more pressing problems Illinois faced directly after the war was veteran assimilation, a group that compromised one-eighth of the state’s population. In 1943, Illinois Governor Dwight Green created the Committee on the Rehabilitation and Employment of Veterans, a year before U.S. Congress passed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (the GI Bill of Rights). A year later, in 1944, the governor’s committee issued a booklet, “It’s All Yours, Veteran,” that directed discharged soldiers on how to obtain state and federal benefits. The Illinois War Council assigned funds for veterans’ aid, and local war councils created information centers for the same cause. The general assembly, in 1945 established the Illinois Veterans Commission (IVC) with a two-year appropriation of $2,801,960. The IVC had 146 branch offices by the end of the decade, at least one in each of the state’s counties.
Illinois extended a number of benefits and services to veterans in addition to the set benefits on the national level. The state offered scholarships to students attending the University of Illinois and five state teacher colleges who were unable to complete their degrees in the time provided by the GI Bill. The state increased funding for higher education due to the rapidly increasing numbers of veterans seeking undergraduate degrees and campuses lacking accommodations. Not only did the state expand education for veterans, but the state also provided an additional $8 million for the building of veterans’ wings attached to hospitals in Jacksonville and Elgin. The state also funded the construction of new rehabilitation centers explicitly for veterans in several areas.
Of all the towns and cities in Illinois, Peoria gained national recognition. The Peoria Plan of Human Rehabilitation became a model for other veterans’ organizations in Illinois and elsewhere. Grants provided by the state and the Community Chest, local businesses, churches, American Red Cross, and veterans’ organizations among various others, created the Veterans’ Service Center as a centralized unit for treating physically and mentally disabled veterans. Here, veterans gained access to information about the GI Bill and state benefits, medical treatment, and psychological treatment. Personnel involved with the Peoria Plan emphasized the study and care of physically disabled veterans. This emphasis on the well-being of physically disabled veterans gained the attention of the nation. New occupation therapy methods prepared many paraplegics for employment. Within a matter of time, civilians began using the service center’s occupational and counseling services.
Veterans assimilating back into a mainstream society called attention to previous state problems such as housing and agriculture. Veterans returning home found that agriculture was in a much better condition than before the war. Even though the general public saw the state of agriculture as expanding due to either farmers expanding their farmlands by themselves or farmers being forced to expand or sell to absentee owners, most farms remained individually owned and family-operated. Between the war years, farmers actually reduced their mortgage indebtedness by half. The demand for crops remained high and rising prices motivated farmers to acquire new tools for farming. Illinois remained one of the leading states in crop and hog production, while a large number of farms began to raise chickens, vegetables, and fruits. In 1948, prices wavered and the federal government increased subsidies and extended social security protection to farm laborers in 1950. The Illinois Farm Bureau Federation debated with the U.S. Department of Agriculture over the specifics of payments for various supplies, but the 1950s remained a prosperous period in agriculture.
Veterans moving into the city foreshadowed housing problems in Illinois. During and after World War II there was a great shortage of adequate housing. Most of the GI loans went toward housing, but the industry could not build fast enough. In 1945, the general assembly granted cities and counties the power to obtain slums to build public housing and provided ten million dollars towards the movement. More than one hundred housing authorities existed in 1948, but bias against government intrusion into the private sector limited the actual construction of public housing. It was common for local authorities to use public funds to secure the sites for development and left the construction of the developments to private builders. However, shortages in housing led to creative responses in some Illinois communities. One example, the Williamson County Housing Authority, used state funds to buy four hundred homes from the Illinois Ordinance Plant and then sold them on long-term contracts to Herrin and Marion residents. Veterans in Rockford formed a corporation, bought Camp Grant barracks from the War Assets Administration, and transformed them into private homes.
Census data for the late 1940s showed that Illinois remained the third-leading manufacturing state in the nation, and conversion from war production back to goods was a smooth transition. Industrial growth occurred in many areas of the state, but Chicago remained the largest with three-fourths of all manufacturing. In the 1940s, Illinois became the top producer of radios and electronics. The growth of automobiles skyrocketed. All wartime production excelled in company expansion in Illinois during the post-war years. By doing so, Illinois became accelerated into a very active state and several changes were about to take place.
The postwar economic boom in the United States touched every surface of society. Workers brought home larger paychecks which in turn allowed more people to purchase more goods. Consumer credit grew from $5.7 billion to $58 billion in a matter of twenty years. No longer did people have to wait in line or ration their goods. Car factories reverted back to producing vehicles becoming part of a catalyst for suburbanization.
The rise of the automobile prompted massive suburban growth and literally transformed the state’s landscape. At the same time people were moving out of the inner cities, the Highway Act of 1956, which created the interstate highway system, the national government delivered 90 percent of the cost for the construction of the highways that transported people to and from the cities. Several organizations insured long-term mortgage loans, reduced payments, and provided the working class with the chance to own a home. With the help of federal policies, people saw themselves aspiring to move to the suburbs. Those who were new to the state and those who were tired of the deteriorating and cramped city life chose to move out of the hustle and bustle. But suburbanization was not always pretty. Several industries moved out of the city. Businesses followed people, meaning retail chains resurrected stores in the outer limits of the city. Jobs were transformed and high numbers were lost. Some scholars claim that some groups of people moved out of the city due to those who were moving in. The “desire to escape racial change often figured into the calculations of the new suburbanites (which came to be known as white flight).”
The move to suburbia greatly shifted demographics in Chicago. The most significant trigger to the city’s demographics was the mass migration of Southern blacks that started during World War II and continued to increase in subsequent years. Chicago’s South Side ghetto imploded during the incoming wave. Several sectors of the city became dominated by African Americans. Those who moved into neighborhoods dominated by whites faced relentless discrimination and violence. The ‘chronic urban guerilla warfare’ started in the midst of World War II as whites attacked the homes of ‘blockbusting’ African American families. For two years (1944-46) white mobs attacked forty-six black homes and killed at least three. Full-scale riots exploded in 1946 and 1947 when the Chicago Public Housing Authority attempted to relocate African American veterans into temporary public housing projects in all-white neighborhoods. In all of these types of instances, the Chicago PD aimed to protect African Americans from violent white mobs.
The most notorious of these instances was in the suburb of Cicero. Many of the residents were noted to have fled the inner city because of the influx of blacks. When one African American family moved into what the whites had deemed their territory, thousands of whites took to the streets to defend what was rightfully theirs. Burning and vandalizing continued for several days and nights before authorities could restore some sort of order. Cicero became known as the “preeminent symbol of northern bigotry” in the 1950s. The riots tainted Chicago’s race relations.
Reaching the 1960s and 1970s, race relations deepened with the appointment of Richard J. Daley as mayor. In his initial years, he seemed to have worked hard to better the relationship between blacks and whites. However, underneath all the good things he was doing for the African American community his main priority was making the white community happy, including the separation of races. Daley perpetuated the separation by using funds to construct public housing within established ghettos. Daley enforced a reign of law and order. The August uprisings of 1965 and years after sprang from resentment against Daley and resulted in several injuries, arrests, and an even larger racial divide.
Race was not the only subject of tension among Illinois residents and officials. Liberals and conservatives clashed over ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment or the ERA in the 1970s. The postwar years raised questions about women and their role/s after the war. Many organizations sprung to life in an effort to fight for women’s liberation such as the National Organization for Women (NOW). NOW’s principal goals were reproductive rights and equal workplace treatment. Many women showed they were willing to work if federal and state laws changed where as other women fought for a constitutional amendment to ensure a permanent reform. In 1972, the U.S. Congress passed the ERA, which stated that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex,” and set a seven-year time limit for a three-fourths ratification by the states. Illinois became a crucial battleground state.
In three months, nineteen states ratified the amendment, and twenty-three by the end of 1972. By 1973, the total rose to thirty-one states. When Nebraska halted ratification with the deadline fast approaching, activists petitioned Congress for an extension of seven years. Congress responded with a three-year extension, pushing the deadline back to 1982. As Congress pushed back the deadline for ratification, the Illinois General Assembly began to discuss the ERA. At the time, only a few women served in the state house and senate. The following years witnessed an influx of women legislators, but the ERA failed to pass in 1972, 1973, and 1976. Many organizations joined NOW in an extensive lobbying campaign, but conservators eagerly fought back against the ratification of the amendment. The fight to pass the ERA was lost in Illinois as well as fifteen other states. Yet, all was not lost.
Women played a crucial role in the writing of a new state constitution years prior to the ERA. Many governors and other leaders in the community had been calling for a revision of the state’s constitution, but some legislators wavered on calling a convention. The League of Women Voters paved the way for a revision of the constitution. Marjorie Pebworth, took the campaign to the capital. In the following years, voters authorized a call for a constitutional convention in which the rights of minorities and women would be discussed. The convention was the most heterogeneous convention in the state’s history with fifteen women and thirteen African Americans attending. While the new constitution addressed the several problems shadowing the state, it addressed the issue of individual rights and fair treatment. The new constitution enacted a bill that guaranteed women equal protection under the law and prevented discrimination against the handicapped. A section outlawed “discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed, national ancestry and sex in hiring and promotion practice of any employer or in the sale or rental of property.”
Illinois in the post-war years echoed the problems facing the entire nation. Illinois officials saw the chance to change their state but were hesitant to completely change the state’s policies and traditions. Although Illinois as a state accepted changes, some Illinois residents and officials furiously fought against the growth. We can see how the landscape changed through suburbanization; how the demographics changed with the influx of people; and how relationships changed based on class and race. All these changes were challenged and some were defeated such as adequate public housing, but it is evidence of state growth and acceptance.
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