Taxes. Is there anything Americans like to complain about more? This episode takes a deep dive into the U.S. tax system, paying particular attention to the property tax. Exploding a popular myth that purports Black Americans pay little to no taxes, historian Andrew Kahrl reveals how Black Americans have long paid more than their fair share of property taxes amid and after the rise of the Jim Crow fiscal order. Along the way, we also discuss the role property taxes play in local government, movements for equitable taxation, and the exploitative tax lien industry and its role in a massive government-sanctioned theft of Black land. 

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Andrew W. Kahrl is professor of history and African American studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of the books The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America, Free the Beaches: The Story of Ned Coll and the Battle for America’s Most Exclusive Shoreline, and The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in the Coastal South, and served as the Principal Investigator of a study of the History of African American Outdoor Recreation for the National Park Service.