Let Them Plow

Chapter Two examines a handful of pivotal Supreme Court cases brought against school desegregation at the turn of the century and the first few decades of the 20th century. The Cumming v. Georgia case in 1899 indicated a demand for equality on the basis of taxpayer status that was understood by the plaintiffs to be intertwined with race, a demand that was interpreted by the Supreme Court only in the language of taxation and federalism. This chapter also highlights regional variations and a number of cases brought at the height of Jim Crow segregation by people of color who fell outside the black-white paradigm, even if courts then imposed it on them.

Taxpayers and Taxeaters

Chapter Six focuses on how demands for racial integration in education after Brown also frequently deployed tax-based activism to achieve their ends, from busing cases to the important, though brief, extension of civil rights litigation logic from education to poverty and welfare rights. In this decade the effects of the War on Poverty and welfare activism worked together to generate the first combined race- and class-based equal protection claims. Response to the poverty jurisprudence of the court was largely filtered through the language of taxpayers' rights. Finally, this chapter examines the Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District case in 1971 and the response of many angry "taxpaying citizens" at the thought of desegregation and busing. Swann was the high point for the judicial attempt at equalizing educational opportunities, even as the de jure/de facto distinction was beginning to break down.

The White Man’s Tax Dollar

Chapter Five examines how the responses to Brown in defense of segregation were consistently framed in terms of "taxpayer" citizenship and the rights of whites to unequal and better funded schooling. In addition, this chapter identifies the tax-centric debate in Virginia in the era of massive resistance, and the private school/state action questions raised in the wake of Brown v. Board, including its impact on tax exempt institutions like Girard College in Philadelphia. This chapter builds on and combines the recently expanded historiography of the white backlash to the "long civil rights movement" by tracing the continuous assertion by segregationists of a legal identity as "taxpaying citizens." This rights claim drew deeply on the debate over whether taxation and education should facilitate equity or facilitate privilege and the use of the claim to "taxpayer" identity by segregationists anticipated the justification for racially unequal schools in decades to come.

A Drain on Taxpayers

Chapter Four looks at the NAACP's strategies in fighting for desegregated graduate school education leading up to the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The organization's legal strategy changed to center on integrated schools in the mid-1930s, but the early cases indicate the ongoing struggle to obtain equality from schools and the legal system through the legal articulation of taxpayer identity. In examining the cases that the organization brought from the 1930s to the 1950s, such as Murray v. Maryland and Missouri ex rel. Gaines, this chapter traces how the organization's legal strategy often centered on taxpayer status and taxpayer rights. Finally, this chapter looks at the way in which the Brown decision was rooted in legal theories which ignored or discounted economic and funding disparities.

A Shabby Meanness

Chapter One introduces the early history of taxpayer civil rights litigation against segregated and unequal education from the post-Civil War era until the turn of the twentieth century. In these 19th century cases and opinions, there was a continual assertion of a legal identity as taxpayers by families of color, and this chapter traces the way taxpayer citizenship became linked to the idea of a right to education in these families' arguments and claims, and even occasionally in the judges' opinions. Nonetheless, even the victories in many of these segregation cases were in name only, as plaintiffs of color continued to struggle without adequate remedy after courts granted a superficial nod to their taxpayer claims.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the concept of taxpayer citizenship and its role in constructing racial inequalities in U.S. history. In particular, the introduction examines the way taxpayer identity has often served as code for whiteness and as an alibi for racial segregation. This chapter also examines the connections between taxes and rights in the history of racial inequality in the U.S. and identifies the pitfalls of justifying policy and spending through the language of taxpayer rights.

Conclusion

The conclusion briefly traces the repercussions of the project of taxpayer identity and legal racial liberalism in the post-Rodriguez era, looking at school financing cases at the state court level in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as partial victories for educational access, such as Plyler v. Doe, in 1981. Recent taxpayer rights claims to "take back" school districts (and school funding) are a significant continuation of the same articulations of whiteness that pervade the history of property tax-based school funding. This chapter argues that the remaining high level of racial segregation and inadequate, unequal educational funding can only be remedied through a more integrated legal understanding of the historical connections between race and class, taxation and inequality.

The Rich Richer and the Poor Poorer

Chapter Seven illustrates the culmination of the tendencies toward combining demands for recognition of class and race based discrimination in the early 1970s. Among a series of other similar cases, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez is a pivotal "taxpayer" case that shut the door on meaningful legal remedies for school inequality. The Rodriguez claimants were low-income children and families of color whose school district was dramatically unequal in comparison to the local, wealthy, white school district in the city. The Court, however, treated the claims of race and class discrimination that the claimants put forward as separate, and ignored the race claim in order to focus on class alone, which they dismissed as a category not entitled to constitutional protection. This chapter argues that the result of Rodriguez was directly tied to the idea that tax status -- and therefore taxable wealth -- was legitimately tied to educational rights and equality. The Court's decision provided an anticommunist rationale for school property tax funding inequality by defending capitalism, economic privacy and local fiscal control against the intersectional claims of race and class inequality.

We Are Taxpaying Citizens

Chapter Three shifts to state and local court cases in the early 20th century, many of which highlight the different unequal tax structures imposed in mandatory segregation states in the South. Whether separate taxation or supposedly "colorblind" taxation, this chapter argues that both of these systems were deployed by all-white school boards and excise boards to ensure that black schools received a tiny fraction of the resources due them and that in many cases African Americans were doubly taxed for the support of white schooling. Finally, this chapter examines the letters written to the NAACP in the 1920s and 1930s as well as news articles and speeches illustrating the importance of the taxpayer citizenship claim made by many African Americans in this period.