the United States." In the 1948 United States presidential election, Rankin opposed the re-election of President Harry S. Truman and supported the Dixiecrat ticket headed by Strom Thurmond and Fielding L. Wright. He was subsequently removed by the House Democratic leadership from the HUAC. Veteran's affairs Rankin chaired the Committee on World War Veterans' Legislation (Seventy-second through Seventy-ninth Congresses)) and the Committee on Veterans' Affairs (Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses). In the first role he was the main House sponsor of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, known as the G.I. Bill of Rights. Edward Humes says it was Rankin "who served as the primary force behind the version of the bill that actually got passed into law." He insisted on a provision that the federal program would be administered in a decentralized manner by the states. This ensured that southern states could continue to practice discrimination against black veterans. According to historian Gavin Wright, "In a comprehensive econometric analysis, Sarah Turner and John Bound find that although the GI Bill had substantial positive benefits for black and white veterans outside the South, those from the South made no significant gains in educational attainment." Rankin sought to prevent the desegregation of VA hospitals. He argued for treating black veterans in rural, isolated all-black hospitals. House Un-American Activities Committee Rankin helped establish the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as a standing committee in Congress in February 1945 by leading the conservative coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats. In the postwar years, he was active in probing the Communist Party, USA. He was criticized for failing to investigate violence and murder perpetrated by chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. After HUAC's chief counsel Ernest Adamson announced: "The committee has decided that it lacks sufficient data on which to base a probe," Rankin added: "After all, the KKK is an old American institution." Bigotry African Americans Rankin introduced a bill in 1920 to prohibit interracial marriage. During that decade, he opposed bills to make lynching a federal crime; although such a bill overwhelmingly passed the House, it was not approved by the Senate. In these positions, he was similar to other southern Democrats: he opposed other bills to support African American civil rights, such as any efforts toward desegregation and the elimination of poll taxes for federal elections. Poll taxes had been used by southern states to disfranchise most blacks and many poor whites