15 Facts About The American Legion

1. The American Legion has almost three million members in nearly 15,000 American Legion posts worldwide.

2. The American Legion had five international groups, fifty US state departments, and 14,500 local posts throughout the world as of 2002.

3. The American Legion is the world's largest veterans' organization, with membership open to those holding an honorable discharge from active duty in the US armed forces after 1914.

4. About The American Legion The American Legion is the largest wartime veterans service organization with nearly 2 million members in 12,875 posts in communities across the United States.

5. The American Legion is calling on the public, corporations and charitable foundations to donate to help fulfill more than 1,500 additional requests.

6. At the state level, The American Legion is organized into "departments", which run annual civic training events for high school juniors called Boys State.

7. The American Legion took a McCarthyist stance on film, threatening to boycott any theater that screened director Edward Dmytryk's Salt to the Devil (1949) because of Dmytryk's involvement with the blacklist.

8. The American Legion helped veterans fill out the paperwork and obtain the benefits.

9. The American Legion mobilized its members across the country and secured passage in June 1944.

10. The American Legion wrote the original draft of the Veterans Readjustment Act, which became known as the GI Bill.

11. In 1942, The American Legion adopted the practice of the VFW to become a perpetual organization, rather than die off as its membership aged as that of the Grand Army of the Republic was rapidly doing.

12. The American Legion invited Mussolini to speak at its convention as late as 1930.

13. The American Legion is fighting every element that threatens our democratic government—Soviets, anarchists, IWW, revolutionary socialists and every other red.

14. In 1917, when war was declared The American Legion had 23,000 members skilled in 77 professions pledged to fight.

15. In 2013, National Headquarters of The American Legion reported 2.3 million members.