1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Sgt. Isaac Woodard, Jr. and Sgt. Joseph H. Maddox GI Bill Restoration Act of 2023 . 2. Findings Congress finds the following: (1) African Americans played a pivotal role in the war effort during World War II, with more than 1,200,000 African Americans serving in the Armed Forces, and, by 1945, approximately 1.9 percent of all officers in the Armed Forces were African Americans. (2) Following World War II, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (58 Stat. 284, commonly known as the GI Bill ) offered substantial material benefits to approximately 16,000,000 veterans to assist them in reintegrating into civil society. (3) The GI Bill offered a range of economic and educational benefits administered by the Federal Government through the Secretary of the Veterans Administration, including monetary assistance to access higher education, government guarantees for housing loans, unemployment allowances, and civilian workforce reentry assistance. (4) Though the legislative text of the GI Bill was race neutral, the administration of benefits through national, State, and local offices of the Veterans Administration resulted in a pattern of discrimination against racial minorities, especially African Americans. (5) Veterans Administration benefits counselors denied African Americans access to educational benefits at certain universities and funneled applicants into industrial and vocational schools rather than higher education opportunities, with just 6 percent of African-American veterans of World War II earning a college degree, compared to 19 percent of White veterans of World War II. (6) In administering its housing guaranty program, the Veterans Administration adopted the racial exclusion programs of the Federal Housing Administration, also known as redlining, which excluded a significant number of African Americans from taking full advantage of the housing guaranty program. (7) The GI Bill created substantial economic growth and wealth accumulation for those who could