The Racist History of Property Taxes in the United States

Kelly Therese Pollock  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app, so you never miss an episode, and please tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen too.  

In his 1819 decision in McCulloch versus Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall declared, "The power to tax involves the power to destroy." Marshall was justifying the exemption of the federal government from state taxation, but his words are no less apt when describing ways that local governments have used the power to assess property taxes in relation to individuals or groups of individuals in their locales.

Immediately after emancipation, formerly enslaved Black Americans knew that the key to economic success would be land ownership; and by 1900, one in four Black farmers in the United States owned their farmland. As African Americans obtained property, though, and especially as reconstruction fell, local tax assessors over taxed not just their land, but also their other property. In Virginia, in 1901, for instance, the average assessed value of a Black owned acre of land was $4.08, and the average assessed value of a white owned acre of land was $4.68, a small difference, but according to the census, the value of the Black owned land was half that of the white owned land. Assessors also meticulously noted every piece of property on Black owned land, making sure to tax it to its full value, while ignoring buildings or improvements on white owned land. They even overvalued the cattle on Black land for tax purposes. Because the formulas used to assess property taxes are often opaque, property owners may not have even realized that their taxes were unfairly applied.

When they did, the obvious remedy, and one that was used in many other civil rights battles, was the courts. However, in the case of property taxes, court cases could only go as far as the state, not all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. During the Great Depression, large property holders would seek injunction against municipalities in federal court so that they could bargain down their property taxes. In response to this, in 1937, Congress passed the Tax Injunction Act, which states that federal district courts, "shall not enjoin, suspend, or restrain the assessment, levy, or collection of any tax under state law where a plain, speedy, and efficient remedy may be had in the courts of such state." In other words, disputes over state and local tax laws are a matter for the states. That may well have been a good solution to the specific problem Congress was trying to solve in 1937, but in the Jim Crow South, that meant that Black property owners who were being over taxed by a local tax assessor in Mississippi could go no further than the Mississippi Supreme Court for relief, where they were unlikely to find it.

The harm of over assessment, which happened in the north, the midwest, and the west, as well as the south, was not just in overpayment, though that was substantial. Overtaxation also increased the chances that the property owner could not keep up with tax payments, and thus would have their land repossessed. African American landowners have lost at least 11 million acres of land in the United States, much of it in the past 50 years, through methods like tax repossession.

The situation only worsened for African American communities, as counties and municipalities allowed third parties to pay tax bills in exchange for being permitted to charge exorbitant interest rates and fees, and to then take possession of the property if the taxes were not paid off, plus interest and fees after a redemption period, which might be anywhere from six months to two years. Not only were African American property owners more likely to be caught up in this cycle to begin with, because of over taxation and systematically lower wages, but the predatory tax buying industry also specifically targeted Black owned properties in its purchases.

When civil rights leader, George Wiley, formed the Movement for Economic Justice in March of 1973, and called for a taxpayers' revolt among the working poor and the middle class, a lot of people were feeling the crunch of high taxes, both property taxes and increasing income taxes. Both white and Black taxpayers were seeking relief, but with neither major political party offering major structural reform, voters, especially white voters, settled for tax cuts that benefited them instead.

That was especially true in California, where property owners were paying extremely high taxes that kept rising. In 1978, two thirds of California voters approved an amendment to the California Constitution known as Proposition 13. Under Prop 13, the rate of increase on assessments is limited to no more than 2% each year, unless there is a reassessment, which only happens in very specific circumstances, such as when a property is sold to a new owner. As a result of Prop 13, which is still in effect today, public services were cut, disproportionately affecting Black and Latino communities.

The long term effect of the law has been an increased wealth gap. Owners are incentivized to stay in their homes, especially their more valuable homes, as long as possible, building up their wealth. As long as the market value of the home increases more than 2% annually, the homeowner is reducing the share of the property taxes they pay when they stay in their home. For instance, in 2003, billionaire Warren Buffett announced that he paid only $2,264 or .056% on his $4 million home in California because of Proposition 13. Studies have shown that poorer residents of California, especially those who must move more often, and Black and Latino residents, pay a much larger portion of their income in property taxes due to the regressive nature of Prop 13.

Despite some efforts around the nation to increase transparency and fairness, problems with the property tax system persist. According to a 2020 report by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, which covered 118 million homes in the United States, they found,  "widespread racial inequalities in the US property tax burden." Even accounting for jurisdiction and local assessment practices, "The average assessment gap for a minority resident in our sample is 10 to 13%." Understanding the history of property taxes will help explain some of the structural reasons behind this continued discrepancy, but it will take public policy action to correct these continued wrongs.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Andrew W. Kahrl, Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Virginia, and author of "The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America."

Hi, Andrew, thanks so much for joining me today. 

Dr. Andrew W. Kahrl  12:03  
Well, thank you for having me. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  12:05  
Yes, I was really interested to read your book, and I'm happy to be talking to you about it. Wanted to ask, this is your third book, so I wanted to hear a little bit about what led you to write this book. 

Dr. Andrew W. Kahrl  12:17  
Yeah. And I mean, the seeds were kind of planted when I was doing work on my first book, "The Land Was Ours," which was a history of African American land ownership and development in the south, in the coastal south. And in the course of doing work on that, I stumbled upon this case of a real estate development project that a group of African American professionals from Washington, DC, were trying to get off the ground, and they no sooner had they acquired the land and began embarking on their plans, the county tax assessor dramatically raised their property taxes far in excess of what anyone else in the area was paying, and it seemed like, from all indications, a deliberate attempt to prevent this Black resort development from taking shape in the in the area. And I'd never, I'd spent my entire, like, young career at that point, or at least, you know, through graduate school, you know, studying the history of Jim Crow segregation and the history of racial inequality in America, and I felt like I was familiar with all the tools and of the trade as it were. And I'd never come across the use of the power, the tax powers that local governments have, as an instrument of of racism and and as a weapon against African American, you know, land ownership, or, or, or other sort of uses. So that tipped me off to maybe, I got curious. I was, you know what? What's going on here? I mean, and honestly, like, at that point, I'd never like, if you would have told me in grad, grad school, I was going to be writing a book about taxes, I would have thought you were crazy. It was not something that was on my radar. It was not something I'd sort of ever thought to like specialize in, although, you know, I guess it made sense, given that I was already sort of working on land and real estate, or at least, kind of gravitating toward that subject that eventually I was going to have to grapple with property taxes. And so, yeah, that that was really where it began, was just kind of that initial discovery. And then I just kind of, you know, kept on picking at it and sort of poking around in one realizing that there was very little at any scholarship done on this. There was some, you know, it wasn't really in any of the histories of segregation or the histories of Jim Crow or other or, you know, or really, you know, African American history more broadly in the 20th century. But then I started doing some preliminary research, you know, kind of, this is the early days of, you know, just having all of these newspapers on, you know, online databases so you could kind of do keyword searches and just be and I just started, you know, going through Black, historic Black newspapers, and it was everywhere. I mean, they were talking about the sort of the, you know, the ways in which they were being unfairly taxed, and instances similar to that kept coming up. I started finding some pretty significant cases, ones that kind of, you know, became woven into major portions of the book. I mean, I just kind of went from there.

Kelly Therese Pollock  15:06  
So this book is looking at 150 years of history, and you're looking at not just one geographic area, but kind of all over the United States. So can you talk some about where you looked? You just mentioned newspapers, but where all you looked for this and also how you decided what to focus on? I presumably there are lots more stories you could have told that, you know, how did you decide what to incorporate into the book?

Dr. Andrew W. Kahrl  15:32  
Yeah, I mean, it was a real challenge in the sense that I, once I decided I was going to do a book on this, on this subject, I was I also decided that I did not want to do like a case study of one place, because it was immediately evident to me that this was a broader phenomenon. This was not something that was happening within one locale. This was not, you know, African Americans were not dealing with, you know, the problems within local tax structures, just within one locality. And it was something that was happening both in the rural south of the late 19th and early 20th century, and even as the sometimes, the motives, circumstances, and causes differed, the outcome seemed to be strikingly consistent, both from the late 19th century right up through, you know, the Great Migration urban north and up through today. So I decided early on, it was like, this is going to be a national story. I'm going to not sort of allow it to be narrowly focused on one place, one city, or even one region, or even, as I was beginning to see, like even one particular kind of time period, except, you know, broadly speaking, after emancipation, you know, through the 20th century. And so one of the things you know in terms of source material, I mean, I guess there's the sources like first I had to kind of educate myself on the mechanics of local tax systems, both, and I really, was really interested in kind of all three phases of how this was operating, because I was seeing sort of the problem manifest itself, both in patterns of over taxation, and that's the things that are happening in assessors' offices. You know, the tax assessors either deliberately or just baked right into this, you know, this sort of structure of how these, how local taxes are administered. But I was also seeing, like, some real issues, and this was a kind of a really startling discovery, was the problems with on the enforcement side, and these tax lien sales and the impact of tax delinquency, and how this could be not only sort of weaponized by local governments, but also became this kind of spawned this entire predatory industry that use these laws to enrich themselves. And then thirdly, I was, I wanted to follow the money from you know, from these local offices to where they're what it's being spent on, namely, schools, which is the primary recipient of local tax dollars, as well as other local goods and services. So I wanted to kind of look at the distribution of local tax dollars, and African American struggles to get their fair share of what they are paying into the this local system. And so, so one I was like, trying to actually understand what it was I was reading, what I was seeing. I mean, I kind of sort of had to sort of do a crash course and just sort of understanding the laws and administrative practices surrounding local taxation. So I spent a lot of time, like, you know, leaning on law professors, reading a lot of, you know, like law review articles. I mean, there was, I mean, this just kind of really, just sort of understanding the basics, so that, like, when I did go into the archives, I could actually understand what it was I was seeing. And then as well, I mean, just being able to figure out, like, where, what are some of the broader patterns that are unfolding here. Because, as you know, I mean these, these are very local practices, and the laws are actually varied from state to state, sometimes from locality to locality, and so, so that was a big challenge in terms of determining, you know, how was I going to tell this national story, while also recognizing the local variations, not sort of, in any way, kind of getting the history wrong, because I'm sort of, you know, I don't want to gloss over or in any way. So in making that decision, I began to detect what are some of the bigger sort of patterns that I'm seeing. But also, I think, really, at the end of the day, where I came back to it's like, how can I, how can I best tell a history of taxation in America from from the perspective of African Americans, and at the same time, basically retell the story of, you know, African American history from reconstruction up to the 21st century, through the lens of local tax policies and practices, like through the fiscal lens, as it were? So in a sense, like, once I kind of decided, like, that's the kind of brand sort of narrative here, like, that's the big overarching story is looking at, you know, what does the history of taxation America look like when it's seen through these from this perspective? And how can we retell African American history through this fiscal lens? So then you really have to kind of then look at the major moment. You have to sort of follow the journey from the rural south into the urban north. You have to look at all the kind of major sort of issues and and concerns that are shaped in that are shaping African Americans' experiences and political and social struggles throughout these times. So in a sense, like that was kind of guiding me toward the stories, the incidents, or the kind of issues that best captured that, that best actually sort of revealed these, you know, that best kind of helped situate the reader within these larger sort of aspects of US History throughout that time period, and seeing how local tax systems were quietly but in some but profoundly, actually shaping this history. And so that kind of led me to what I found to be the most representative examples, the ones that actually really kind of captured the bigger issues at stake at given periods in time.

Kelly Therese Pollock  20:57  
You mentioned that this is not just happening in one place or at one time, but it is happening again and again. So what are some of the qualities of property taxes and the way that property taxes are assessed that leads to this similar outcome over and over again?

Dr. Andrew W. Kahrl  21:16  
Yeah. That's a great question. I think it's something that I early on I realized, I mean that, mean this is, it's, you can't just simply, you know, ascribe it to intentional biases, although in certain periods in time, that was in certain incidents that was the case. Many of these issues were systemic. They were actually sort of, you know, a product of the way in which this tax is administered and could happen, and it still continues to happen to this day, you know, even if say, you know, the assessor is acting in good faith. So a couple of really important things to note about local property taxes. And I'll let me preface this by, you know, first saying, like property taxes, in theory, are a good tax, like they're one a tax on wealth, the only tax on wealth that we have in this country. They, in theory, should be a progressive tax, namely, that they exact a higher sort of people of higher income, or people who possess more property, are going to be paying more of it. But in practice, it is often done the opposite. And I've sort of it is in practice it has imposed heavier burdens on lower income, not just, not just homeowners or landowners. And I think, you know, I kind of operate from the premise of you know that anyone who goes to bed at night with a roof over their head is paying property taxes. You know, if you are, you know renters are paying property taxes. You know those, you know their landlords are making damn sure that those that they are paying their the property taxes on the on the res, place of residence. So, so I think one thing that is important to note that is that it because it is local, because it is a local tax, it is administered at the local level, that does a couple of things. One is that it is, you know, that local tax assessors are like, and this is something I was really startled to find early on in the research process, it's like they are remarkably immune from outside, from regulation at the state or federal level. They are, they are allowed to operate sort of as they please, and they're really only accountable to their local constituents in a lot of respects. And that was certainly the case historically, and it remains so to this day. And as a matter of fact. I mean, you know, you as a as a local taxpayer or as a victim of discriminatory taxation, and really have no recourse to the federal courts at all, like the, literally, the doors are shut to the federal courthouse, you know, when it comes to matters of discriminatory taxes, which, again, you know, if we think about the story of the civil rights movement, it was about opening up those doors and making sure that there was checks on local abuses of power, whether it be with denying voting rights or public accommodations or workplace or the like. I mean, these were the legal struggles that were being fought during the Civil Rights Movement, and local tax systems like skated right through that virtually unscathed and so that, again, allows for all kinds of sort of, you know, discriminatory practices to happen, again, either intentional or unintentional, without the sort of checks that you know, we see in other arenas where that produce or are prone to discriminatory treatment or unequal outcomes. So that's one element. But then also, you know, and this is another kind of aspect that I sort of develop in the book, is, is how, because it is local, it sort of leads to what I describe as sort of placed based inequality, namely that. And it really incentivizes segregation within housing markets and schools, it incentivizes white, middle class, white Americans or wealthy Americans, to cluster together and to draw lines around their communities, you know, through municipal incorporation or through, you know, school district formation, because then you can keep your tax dollars within those boundaries, and as well, because of that reality, it also incentivizes exclusionary practices to keep poor people, people who might depress property values, who might be seen as imposing greater costs on local goods and resources. And so it has all because it's local in both how it's raised and then how it's spent, it really has, you know, kind of, you know, sort of quietly, but, you know, powerfully, sort of encouraged and sort of reinforced many of the sort of inequalities that, you know, we can we've struggled against in the 20th century, and still do so to this day. So that, I think, is another sort of element of is important to sort of look at, and then look at how that might get us to think differently, or at least, you know, think more deeply about these major themes that we're familiar with in the 20th century. Again, the struggle against school segregation, the struggle for fair housing and the struggle to desegregate housing markets. You know, you know, the the rise of post war suburbs, and not just kind of the growth of suburbs, but I mean the fragmentation of the metropolis, you know. I mean just the proliferation of all these separate municipalities, school districts that are just, you know, in many respects, could almost be sort of thought of as like little tax havens, like places where people can, kind of, you know, you know, be able to have ultimately, and I mean, this is one of the perverse aspects of sort of how this works in practice is that if you're living in a sort of high income community that is lacking in sort of, you know, and you know, that has high property values and is lacking in, say, poor people, or, you know, or much economics, economic diversity, you can effectively enjoy better local public goods and services at a lower cost, that you can actually, you know, tax property at a lower tax rate and generate more revenue. And the reverse is the same, that in urban, you know, and this is the story of, like, of cities during the sort of, you know, so called urban crisis of the 60s and 70s, is that, you know, their needs are mounting while their tax base is being drained. And as you know, and they're, you know, they were pushing up against the limits of how much they could raise tax rates. And I mean, some of the highest tax rates in the country in the 1960s were in some of the poorest cities. And that was a, you know, a product of how this structure is set up. And I think that's really, ultimately, one of the stories that my book tells is like how this structure was built, whose interest it served, and what did it mean to live inside of that structure?

Kelly Therese Pollock  27:29  
We've been talking about the ways that that this can disadvantage African Americans, even when people are operating in good faith. But of course, some of the stories in your book are of people who are very much not operating in good faith. So I wonder if you could talk some about, you know, there are stories that you talk about in the south where there are just outright corrupt practices, where there are very high property taxes being levied to drive people out of their homes, and this happens multiple times in the history that you're telling. So could you sort of talk through some of how that is being done and being done in a way that is very much sort of hidden, in ways that people can't necessarily detect?

Dr. Andrew W. Kahrl  28:16  
Yeah. I mean, that is one of the sort of and that maybe, you know, helps explain, in part, sort of why this, this history has remained hidden, is because sometimes these could be very subtle and and hard to, you know, maybe something that people sensed but could struggle to pin down, or, much less prove and, and sometimes, you know, and when I'm began looking at it sometimes, and look, you know, kind of looking at the tax records, it wasn't even something where, an instance, where Black landowners were being just grossly over taxed, like, I mean, like giving valuations on their property that were, like, absurdly high, but they might have been actually sort of valued at sort of an accurate level. The problem was, is that the wealthiest, largest white landowners in those same counties were paying next to nothing. Their land was being valued at very low amounts, which ultimately meant that, you know, African American landowners were being over taxed. They were being forced to shoulder a heavier burden. But I mean, yes, the use of local taxing powers to dispossess people of property, to punish and intimidate those who might challenge white supremacy. You know, I was a recurring theme that I continued to see in many instances. I mean, the the abuse of local tax delinquency laws is really, I mean, kind of one of these stories about, you know, not just the story of Black land loss in the 20th century, which is, you know, again, a critically important and really still kind of understudied phenomena, how African Americans really had 16 million acres of land in 1910 and steadily lost much of that over the course of the 20th century. And tax sales were one of those instruments of dispossession, and there was a pattern to this, as I found. It was often when African Americans owned land that became valuable, when it became something that was desirable, you know, that then they became endangered. Then they became, you know, endangered by these kind of tricks, like, say, a tax bill that doesn't arrive, or a tax payment that doesn't get recorded, and then suddenly the land is quietly put up for auction at a tax sale that the owner is unaware of, and before they know what happened, you know, they don't no longer even hold title to their property and have no recourse to reclaim it. And all of that is done ostensibly, you know, legally. And I, you know, there are many examples I give in the book of these, this very thing happening, where people are, you know, literally having their land stolen out from under them through the legal process of tax delinquency sales. And again, it was invariably instances where they were sitting on valuable property, property that had become enhanced in value. And so for me, like, again, I had to sort of understand, you know, how is this happening? Like, what are the ways in which these laws work? How could, you know, I mean, it was difficult, in one sense, to really be able to sort of fully capture, like, the full scope of this because that would have required, I mean, I would, it would have taken me a couple more decades to write this book if I had, like, gone into every county courthouse in the south and, like, went through every single tax sale records, but I was able to find enough to suggest that there was definitely a pattern unfolding here, and it fit again within this sort of broader scheme of, essentially, you know, sort of stealing land that was, you know, something that became, whether, you know, there was, you know, oil or gas deposits that were found under it, whether this was land that, you know, a sort of neighboring farmer wanted to acquire to increase his holdings, or in the case of one of the cases that I really highlight in the book of a woman who owned land on the South Carolina Sea Islands who had it taken from her through a tax sale without her knowledge, because this was an area that was now becoming highly desirable for real estate development, you know, during the era where, you know, this was becoming a kind of playground for, you know, white Americans. You know, places like Hilton Head were booming in popularity. And again, like you know, these landowners became very vulnerable in those instances because of this legal tool that you know, those seeking to land speculators and developers could employ. And also, as well, I should also just say, even if they're not, I mean, let's not also discount the fact that paying taxes was hard if you are Black and poor in the south. And so many folks fell into tax delinquency because they couldn't pay the taxes, and they were probably being over taxed to begin with. So you know, sometimes, you know, they might have known that their land was, you know, falling into tax delinquency, but struggled to climb out from under it. And that land was still sold, and they still lost it, you know. So that was, you know, happening throughout this time period. That's in addition to, and again, switching back over to the assessment side, one thing, and this was an early story that I found, and the reason why I was, you know, I found it early on is because it did become like a federal lawsuit, was the case of Edwards, Mississippi. This was a town, sort of south central Mississippi, just west of Jackson. This is a town, majority Black town, and actually the majority of African Americans living in a town owned their own homes. And they in 1966, began what you know, a almost lasted an entire year of boycotting local, white owned businesses, you know, demanding, actually, you know, the demands that they made of town officials, all many of them had to do with matters of local public spending, like the fact that they wouldn't pave the streets in their neighborhoods. They had no sidewalks in their neighborhoods. They didn't have sewer lines in their neighborhoods. All these things, again, that the town, like the town, didn't collect their garbage. I mean, all these things that, you know, while they are paying taxes to this town, they are getting nothing in return. And so that was actually at the heart of what their what they were demanding. And during the Edwards Freedom Movement, and it was a highly successful boycott that actually, you know, crippled local white businesses for the for a time, and in retaliation, white town officials went through the local tax books and just doubled, in many instances, the tax the assessed value of African American owned homes just went right through it. I mean, it was, there was it was a naked abuse of power. And in sense like that was, I did not find many other examples of it just being so flagrant, but, but nevertheless, I mean, they ultimately got away with it because they filed a lawsuit with the help of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and they lost in the federal courts because the federal court said that, you know, we have no jurisdiction here. You have to take this up in state court, which meant taking it up in Mississippi court, in, you know, 1968, which is where it died. And so ultimately, they were only able to actually kind of reverse those unfair taxes by taking control of local government, which they ultimately did, because they were a large majority of the town's population. But you know, in addition to that, I mean, all these other, you know, sort of elements of what was happening, and, you know, during the Civil Rights Era, like in Sunflower County, Mississippi county officials took away the tax exemption and stopped providing water services to the church that Fannie Lou Hamer was a part of. You know, they in South Carolina, they debated actually enacting a law that removed tax exemptions on religious institutions that hosted civil rights meetings. I mean, you know, so there was a well, you know, there were, you know, many white segregationists were well aware that local taxing powers could be a weapon against the movement, and they were using it in ways that I don't think historians haven't really, until now, really fully appreciated.

Kelly Therese Pollock  35:38  
And just so that we don't just pick on the south, I should point out that my own city of Chicago has plenty of corruption that is highlighted.

Dr. Andrew W. Kahrl  35:47  
We spend a lot of time in Chicago. Absolutely.

Kelly Therese Pollock  35:50  
Yeah, and a lot of the tax sales that you're talking about happen in Chicago as well. And that's just, it's, it's really heartbreaking. I mean, you know, I'm a I'm a homeowner, and I assume that if I missed a tax payment, I would, you know, just get another letter and I'd go, oh, right, I missed it, and I would pay it. And that is not what is happening in the in the stories that you're telling.

Dr. Andrew W. Kahrl  36:12  
Yeah, and I mean, in this, you know, I should mention Illinois, you know, tax delinquency laws are really, you know, some of the worst in the country in terms of just how harsh they are and how extreme the penalties are for missed payments, and how lucrative it is for those who buy these tax liens at tax lien sales. In fact, actually, you know those, the debt that you know these investors buy at tax lien sales can the interest on that debt can rise in Illinois, up to 48% over the life of that, you know, before the deadline for redeeming it, which can, in many instances, make it almost impossible to be able to actually settle those debts, because with the interest, and then you add on the other fees that these investors can tack on, I mean, it can become a almost an insurmountable debt, which, again, if you're in the business of trying to, you know, acquire property through tax sales, makes it very advantageous. But, yeah, I mean, so Illinois, I mean, I spend a lot of time looking at this kind of into this predatory industry that took shape in Chicago, and really was, you know, extracting, um, the bulk of its profits from Black neighborhoods on the south and west side, and so that it really became part of how I was looking at this bigger, sort of, you know, sort of set of issues and challenges that African Americans were facing in housing markets. And adding another chapter or dimension to what we you know, is now becoming a really thoroughly told story, you know, from, you know, beginning with Beryl Satter's book on family properties, which tells the story of contract sales, you know, this kind of, you know, highly exploitative practice that was taking advantage of African Americans' inability to get conventional mortgages by, you know, selling them these, you know, you know, getting, you know, selling them homes through these contracts that ultimately were almost designed to fail, and resulted in, you know, massive amounts of income and wealth being taken out of these neighborhoods, and and also as well. I mean, you know, Keeanga- Yamahtta Taylor's book looking at the FHA HUD scandal, and the whole, or the whole way in which this, you know, federal housing program was also as well, sort of utilize, you know, sort of,  utilized by exploitative actors with devastating consequences for these neighborhoods. And, you know, one of the things I learned early on when I was doing this is, like, actually, like, some of these are like, literally the same people sometimes. I mean, literally the sort of contract sellers in Beryl Satter's book later become tax buyers and are like, you know, moving on to their next scheme, you know, after that, sort of market dries out. And one of the sort of most, I guess, chilling aspects of this, and when you think about sort of who falls in, who falls into tax delinquency, you know, these tended to be folks who actually own their homes outright, like they, they surmounted all these obstacles. They've been able to pay, you know, they've been able to, you know, acquire full ownership of their property. They've been able, you know, in spite of all these obstacles, and then, you know, one missed tax payment can then become the sort of source of of the situation that could ultimately lead to them losing their home or or being able to hold on to their home, but at that extreme financial cost.

Kelly Therese Pollock  39:24  
As you mentioned, some of this discrepancy is still exists, despite people's best efforts, but there have been efforts along the way. There's been political activism, there's been pushback, as people have realized that that this is happening, that African Americans are paying disproportionate property taxes. Do you talk some about some of that activism?

Dr. Andrew W. Kahrl  39:47  
Yeah. I mean, I'll say that. I mean, there's been activism on this for for generations now. I mean, you know, part of you know, the other part of the story I tell in this book is of the story about African Americans are fighting for tax Justice. You know, at all phases of this history, you know, going back to the, you know, the Jim Crow South in the early 20th century, for one like, you know, fighting to challenge and you know, you know, rebuke, the lie that white supremacists told that African Americans didn't pay any taxes, and then, therefore they didn't deserve school funding or paved streets or clean water in their homes, and, you know, sort of calling out that lie by producing the receipts as it were and showing that actually, you know, not only are African Americans paying taxes, they're paying more than their fair share. At the same time, sort of questioning the very logic that you know how much you pay in taxes should determine your rights as a citizen. But when we get into say that you know the 1960s and 70s, there are, you know these, these are, it is becoming evident in city after city that you know these, that the distribution of of local property tax burdens and the assessments of properties by neighborhood are grossly unfair to African Americans in low income neighborhoods and and are challenging that directly. This culminates, I tell the story of in Chicago of Harold Washington, you know, future mayor of the city at when he was a state senator in the late 70s. And this was after a study that was done by that, you know, looked at assessment levels across across the Chicago and found, and, you know, compared white, you know, predominantly white and predominantly African American neighborhoods. And found that, you know, without exception, African American neighborhoods were being the properties that were being assessed at a higher percentage of their actual value than white neighborhoods. And this was, like one of these galvanizing moments where, you know, he's, you know, he's kind of organizing neighborhoods on the west side and on the south side, you know, to begin to and doing a lot of kind of education, you know, I mean, it was interesting, like, you know, this urban economist who, you know, taught at UIC, Arthur Lyons, who actually became a great resource for me as I was working on this book. In addition to being like a subject in the book, he was the one who, like, supervised this study. And, you know, as after it came out, like, you know, Harold Washington and Art Lyons would be like, holding these little sessions in like, church basements, where Art Lyons would get up there in front of a blackboard and just kind of like, break it down for folks. Like, here's how assessments work, and here's how, here's what you should be looking at when you get your tax bill. Here's how you can appeal your taxes. And then all and then Harold Washington will get up there and talk about, here's why we need to fight together on this, and here's why we need to demand accountability from the tax assessor's office. So it became one of those sort of moments where, and I think, you know, really so much of and I kind of try to retell the story of the tax revolts that we often, you know, know about, you know, you know, Prop 13 in California. And we think of that as a right led, sort of a part of the kind of rise of the new right in the 1980s and it's that certainly is what it became. But in many respects, like taxpayer unrest and efforts to put forward movements for taxpayer rights and justice was something that began on the left in the early 70s. I mean, it was people like George Wiley, formerly of the head of the National Welfare Rights Organization, who then later started this organization called the Movement for Economic Justice,  which was all aimed at trying to bring together white and Black working class communities to actually see that they had shared interest on pocket book issues like the fact that they were being, you know, really, you know, you know, taxed through the teeth at the same time as their schools were being underfunded, and at the same time that the wealthiest property owners in whatever city they were in were paying next to nothing. And so, you know, and this, you know, Ralph Nader became really involved in this for a while with, you know, his public interest research groups that were going around and doing these studies, and really, again, sort of showing how it was, it was the wealthiest property owners who were just, you know, you know, using their political power and influence and using and using the system to relieve themselves of much of any tax obligations while the average homeowner was, you know, really, you know, you know, getting basically screwed over by this system. And so a couple of things that I sort of found, you know, in looking at this, and I think just trying to understand, well, why, why has this and why is it still not, sort of resulted in a kind of bigger movement for change? And why is it, you know? And why? Why it's particularly that time did we not see this kind of manifest itself in a sort of broader national struggle? And one is because it's so local. You know, you are, you know, you're literally fighting against local tax offices in your communities and and the issues vary from place to place. So one thing and again, like the avenues toward getting accountability and change go through these local offices and institutions, which makes it difficult to really sort of organize at a sort of mass scale. And that remains the case today. I think even as we are, there has been, for instance, in 2020, a study that was done by two noted economists, you know, found that, you know, nationwide, Back and Latino neighborhoods are being over assessed between 12 and 13% higher relative to value than you know white neighborhoods. But still, this is one of these issues where you know all sort of and let absent of a kind of, you know, global solution, you know, action at the federal level, which no one's holding their breath on that right now, but you know, it's going to be something where you have to, sort of, you know, fight for change within the places you live now. That can be a good thing, though, because, you know, again, local government is closer to us as citizens. You know, there are instances where this is happening right now. I mean, I end the book, or toward the end of the book, I talk about, you know, what happened in Chicago,  in 2018, when, you know, after the revelations of that, you know, another study that was produced. I mean, it's almost like, kind of like Groundhog Day sometimes when I'm telling the story, it's like, you know, over and over again. It's like, yep, did another study, still racist, you know? And it's like, and then everyone's like, shocked, and it's like, well, I guess we're not really, you know, like, our memories are very short on this problem. But no, so in 2018 you know, the Chicago Tribune, with them, some other investigative reporters released another study showing that, yeah, Black and Latino neighborhoods in Chicago were being grossly over assessed, while the wealthiest neighborhoods were being, you know, very under assessed. And this was after, actually, the assessor, at the time, Joseph Berrios, was, like, had claimed that he'd fixed the problem, and, like, had done all this, you know, you know, it was all solved, and it was clear that he hadn't done anything to solve the problem. And, you know, and voters kicked him out. And this was a pretty significant sort because, you know, he was kind of a pretty establishment figure within, like the Democratic Party political machine in the city. I mean, he got booted from office. This reform candidate, Fritz Kaegi, came in and was dedicated to bringing about change, you know, and working to correct these long standing inequities. And he's, he's been working at it, and it's still face challenges. I sort of, I stopped my history of this, really, at his election. But, I mean, for those who live in Chicago and who sort of have been following this, this remains an ongoing struggle, one that has, you know, seen fits and starts, but it's an evidence, again, that when this gets on the public's radar. I mean, I would say, I, I would say that most of our listeners would, you know, and again, I'm sure there's a very educated audience, I'm sure, but I would bet that many of us would struggle to even name who our tax assessor is. And these are often, in most places, elected offices. These are elected officials, but they are very obscure. They're not sort of, you know, high profile positions. In fact, many of them run unopposed, so they're not even sort of, you know, contested offices, and yet they have all these powers that, like, then they actually can play a really, no, not just sort of, you know, sort of, you know, reflecting the values of properties, but actually, you know, playing a sort of instrumental role, sometimes in shaping, you know, housing markets and real estate within, you know, localities as well as, you know, the sort of size and distribution of the local tax base. So I think, you know this, I think you can, we can take courage from the fact that, you know, when this becomes like an issue that is like front and center, I mean, people sit up and take notice of it, that's when, again, you can see an instance where someone who probably thought he had that job for life, you know, because so many previous assessors, just, you know, were able to sort of, you know, once they're in that office, they just kind of hold on to it, found himself out of a job because, you know, he had not fixed the problem that you know, voters expected of him. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  48:31  
Yes, so homework to everyone is to go find out who your assessor is, and then go look at your property tax bill and see if it makes any sense to you how you are assessed. As I mentioned, I live in Chicago, which has done a great deal of work to try to make these more legible, and I still don't quite understand how assessments are done.

Dr. Andrew W. Kahrl  48:47  
Exactly, and that's another part of this story, is like how hard it is to figure out whether you're being fairly or unfairly assessed, because one of the sort of, you know, weird things about tax assessments is that, invariably, they are only a fraction of the actual value of the property. So, like, fractional assessments is like almost a universal practice like, and I kind of talk about the sort of history of how that came about. But the end result is, is that when you get your assessment, it's like, much lower than what your house is, your property is valued at. So many folks think, oh, wow, I'm getting a deal here. You know, I'm not going to say anything. You know, anything. You know this is, but that actually is totally that's meaningless, because if everyone is being assessed at the same percentage of value, then you know that's that's going to you're going to be paying the same taxes. But, and that's where the devil's in the details, because you know, if you're being assessed at maybe 50% of your property's value, but your neighbor, or more, you know, appropriately, like the people living in another neighborhood, are being assessed at 25% of their property's value, then you're paying twice as much and so and yet, it's oftentimes you don't really, and historically, you know, this was something that was obscured and in some ways hard to you know, you,.and sort of figure out. And so I think that is another part of this story that I tell, is just how subtle these are, how opaque the entire sort of administrative process is, and, and, and I thought one of my roles in telling this history, and I think maybe the fact that I did not come into this as a specialist, in the sense that, like, I wasn't, like, sort of raised up academically. I didn't, sort of, you know, spend, I'm not coming from, like, the assessor's world, like I was an outsider who was trying to learn, like, kind of figure this out and, like, do so in a way that, you know, was just like, like, tell this to me in plain English, like, what's really going on here? Like, how do I and then, you know, I felt in telling this history, I wanted to explain it in a way that actually, just like, actually made sense, like, not get caught up in all this sort of, you know, jargon, or sort of, you know, but really just say, like, this is what's happening here. And like, here's how to best understand it in a way that you don't have to be a tax specialist. You don't have to be someone with, like, you know, immersed in this sort of literature, but rather you can sort of really understand what's going on. And so I think because I was sort of having to learn it myself that way, I tried to sort of apply that principle to the way I wrote this history.

Kelly Therese Pollock  51:15  
Well, I would like to encourage listeners to read the book. So how can they get a copy? 

Dr. Andrew W. Kahrl  51:20  
Yeah, well, so it's available. It's published by the University of Chicago Press. It will actually be coming out in paperback this spring, I believe in April. I know you can pre order it now from the publisher. Of course, you know it's available on Amazon, but you know, I always try to direct folks to go to the publisher's site, or especially go to independent booksellers and get a copy there.

Kelly Therese Pollock  51:42  
Is there anything else you wanted to make sure we talked about?

Dr. Andrew W. Kahrl  51:46  
I felt a sense of, I won't say, urgency, but I did, like, as I was working on this, and I, you know, and I sense, like, because this is like, an unfinished story in many respects, like, because, like, it's not, these are problems that remain ongoing, and because it's something that, especially, you know, with regards to, like these tax sales, which you know, again, most folks are not familiar with, like, scholars, average citizens like these, this is a world that you know, many are, you know, did not know existed that, like, there's this entire industry that actually makes, like, lots of money. Like it's a billion dollar, multi billion dollar industry with, you know, extensive ties to Wall Street, you know, private equities involved like, that you know, invest in other people's tax debts and like, and extract, like, the bulk of their profits from low income neighborhoods, predominantly Black neighborhoods or disproportionately Black neighborhoods and and often, like some of the most vulnerable homeowners, like elderly people and like, I mean, it's just a horribly predatory industry, and also one that actually, as I kind of learned and when and working on this, like, there's a there's good arguments for for tax delinquency sales, I mean, you know, in the sense of, like, you know, how do you deal with vacant and abandoned properties? Well, you know, you put them up for sale and put them in the hands of someone who will, you know, who wants to own and will do something with it. And essentially, that's kind of the argument for, and also, you know, how do you enforce, you know, tax payments from people who choose not to pay. So there's, like, in theory, again, like, you know, there's a place for, you know, sort of having tax sales. But the way that these laws are structured, they're structured in the interest of these investors and and these investors and their practices are not about community revitalization. They're not buying these, you know, buying these liens so they can kind of help better  improve these low income neighborhoods. These are just speculative investments over and over again, you know, you there's, you know, just ample evidence that shows that these tax lien sales and the ways that in the people who are like actually make the very problem that they are ostensibly aimed at solving worse. They actually contribute to the further deterioration of neighborhoods suffering from high rates of delinquency. They're devastating for their victims. And, you know, and this is again, a problem that continues, and it continues in part because lawmakers are, you know, they, you know, are influenced by this industry. You know. This is a highly coordinated industry that, you know, has lobbyists in state houses across the country, that is one that kind of, you know, sort of recites this narrative about, sort of the good that tax sales provide. So I think, you know, when I was working on this, and I was, you know, getting a sense of, like, you know, just how ongoing these problems are, I did feel a sense of like, you know, let's, let's get this done. And like, you know, like, not, you know, sit on it for like, you know, indefinite period of time. Like, because this isn't just some sort of history, you know, chapter. You know, chapter from our history. It is a history that we need to understand, but also one that we need to act on today.

Kelly Therese Pollock  54:48  
Andrew, thank you so much for speaking with me. I really learned a lot, and I'm grateful to have to have learned it.

Speaker 1  54:55  
Well, thank you so much for inviting me. I really enjoy your podcast, so I'm looking forward to hearing it. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  55:00  
Thank you.

Teddy  55:13  
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. Please subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app. You can find the sources used for this episode and a full episode transcript @UnsungHistorypodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain or are used with permission. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram @Unsung__History, or on Facebook @UnsungHistorypodcast. To contact us with questions, corrections, praise, or episode suggestions, please email Kelly@UnsungHistoryPodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and tell everyone you know. Bye!