Veterans Affairs has denied benefits to Black people at higher rates for years, lawsuit alleges

Explore Our Galleries

An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

Breaking News!

Today's news and culture by Black and other reporters in the Black and mainstream media.

Click Here

Ways to Support ABHM?

Click Here

November 28, 2022

By Victoria Ebner, NBC

The Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 14, 2019. (Graeme Sloan / Sipa via AP file)

Obtaining benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs has been disproportionately more difficult for Black Americans for decades, a federal lawsuit filed Monday alleges.

“The results of VA’s racial discrimination has been to deny countless meritorious applications by Black veterans, depriving them and their families of care and support that their faithful service has earned,” the lawsuit reads.

Filed in federal court by Yale Law School’s Veterans Legal Services Clinic on behalf of Conley Monk Jr., a Vietnam War veteran, the suit claims Monk was repeatedly denied home loan, education and medical benefits because he is Black.

Monk is far from alone, the filing alleges. According to VA records obtained through Freedom of Information Act litigation brought by the National Veterans Council for Legal Redress, of which Monk is the co-founder and director, and the Black Veterans Project, the average denial rate for disability compensation was 5.3% higher for Black veterans than their white counterparts between 2001 and 2020. And the racial disparity for average acceptance rates was even higher — 6.8%.

“They failed to redress longstanding, pervasive race discrimination and disparate impacts of which they knew or should have known,” the suit reads.

Discover the lawsuit’s details.

These inequalities are why some called for Biden to install more Black veterans in the VA.

Find more stories like this.

Comments Are Welcome

Note: We moderate submissions in order to create a space for meaningful dialogue, a space where museum visitors – adults and youth –– can exchange informed, thoughtful, and relevant comments that add value to our exhibits.

Racial slurs, personal attacks, obscenity, profanity, and SHOUTING do not meet the above standard. Such comments are posted in the exhibit Hateful Speech. Commercial promotions, impersonations, and incoherent comments likewise fail to meet our goals, so will not be posted. Submissions longer than 120 words will be shortened.

See our full Comments Policy here.