After emancipation, formerly enslaved Black Americans knew that the key to economic freedom was land ownership, but as soon as they began to acquire land, local tax assessors began to overassess their land and exact steep penalties if they couldn’t pay the resulting inflated property taxes. For the past 150 years, all over the country, the same story has played out, with African Americans paying disproportionately higher property taxes, whether due to systemic inequities or corrupt local officials, while at the same time receiving dramatically fewer public services. And due to a Depression-Era law, aimed at limiting the tax bargaining powers of large property owners, Black Americans have been unable to seek redress against discriminatory property tax assessments in the US Supreme Court. 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.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Baby won't you please come home blues,” written by Charles Warfield and performed by Bessie Smith on April 11, 1923, in New York; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a sign in Harlingen, Texas, photographed in 1939, by Lee Russell; available via the The New York Public Library on Unsplash; free to use under the Unsplash License.

Additional Sources:

• “How do state and local property taxes work?” The Tax Policy Briefing Book.
• “History of Property Taxes in the United States,” by Glenn W. Fisher, Economics History Association.
• “America Used to Have a Wealth Tax: The Forgotten History of the General Property Tax,” by Carl Davis and Eli Byerly-Duke, ITEP, November 2, 2023.
• “It’s Time to End the Quiet Cruelty of Property Taxes,” by Andrew W. Kahrl, The New York Times, April 11, 2024.
• “Prop 13 and Inequality: How the 1978 Tax Reform Law Drives Economic and Racial Disparities” by Jonathan Vankin, California Local, November 29, 2022.
• “The Lock-in Effect of California’s Proposition 13,” By Les Picker, The NBER Digest, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2005.
• “Property tax burdens fall on nation’s lowest-income homeowners, study finds,” UChicago News, Mach 9, 2021.
• “The Assessment Gap: Racial Inequalities in Property Taxation,” by Carlos Avenancio-León and Troup Howard, The Washington Center for Equitable Growth, June 10, 2020.

For Ericka Huggins, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which she attended at just 15 years old, was a turning point in her life, inspiring her toward activism. She later joined the Black Panther Party, and after being incarcerated as a political prisoner, served as Director of the acclaimed Oakland Community School and became both the first Black person and the first woman appointed to the Alameda County Board of Education. She continues her activism work today in the fields of restorative justice and social change. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Mary Frances Phillips, Associate Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and author of Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is Vinyl Funk by Alisia from Pixabay, free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Ericka Huggins at Occupy Oakland Protest on November 2, 2011,” by Clay@SU on Flickr, CC by 2.0.

Additional Sources:

• “Ericka Huggins”
• “Hggins, Ericka,” Archives at Yale.
• “Ericka Huggins (January 5, 1948),” National Archives.
• “The 1963 March on Washington,” NAACP.
• “How the Black Power Movement Influenced the Civil Rights Movement,” by Sarah Pruitt, History.com, Originally posted February 20, 2020, and updated July 27, 2023.
• “Black Panther Party,” National Archives.
• “The Black Panther Party: Challenging Police and Promoting Social Change,” Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
• “(1966) The Black Panther Party Ten-Point Program,” BlackPast.
• “Black Panthers’ Oakland Community School: A Model for Liberation,” by Shani Ealey, Staff Writer, Black Organizing Project, November 3, 2016.
• “Black Panthers ran a first-of-its-kind Oakland school. Now it’s a beacon for schools in California,” By Ida Mojadad, The San Francisco Standard, August 7, 2023.

Thousands of years ago, a band of Cahuilla Indians migrated south into the Coachella Valley, calling the area Séc-he, meaning boiling water. The Mexicans translated this as agua caliente (hot water), which is the name still used today. As the United States extended its territory into California, the Agua Caliente were forced onto a reservation, and then, as the Southern Pacific Railroad was granted land in the region, the reservation was carved up into a checkerboard pattern. It took decades of legal fights and government intervention, but today Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians continues its work to retain its cultural heritage and stewards more than 34,000 acres of ancestral land. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Michael Albertus, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and author of Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Dramatic Nostalgic Sad Piano and Cello” by Yevhen Onoychenko from Pixabay; it is free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is the Agua Caliente Reservation; this media is available in the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, cataloged under the National Archives Identifier (NAID) 298622.

Additional Sources

• Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.
• “Dawes Act,” National Archives.
• “S.555 - Indian Gaming Regulatory Act,” 100th Congress (1987-1988).
• “Cahuilla,” UNESCO World Atlas of Languages.
• “Keeping Cahuilla Alive,” by Joan Page McKenna, me yah whae, Spring/Summer 2019.
• Agua Caliente Cultural Museum
• “Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza, Palm Springs, Calif.,” by Kate Nelson, Time Magazine, July 25, 2024.