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An American Dilemma
1270
districts and wards would have schools little better than those provided for the Negroes
now. . . .
“Some communities are . . . so far behind the realization of this democratic ideal
that it is necessary to hold up before them the amount of money which the Negroes
actually contribute in order to emphasize the fact that common justice demands the
more liberal support of colored institutions.
“Many communities in the South have never expended a cent of public money for a
colored public school building, but have relied on the use of a church or a school build-
ing erected by private agencies. In some of these communities bonds have been issued
recently to build expensive schools for whites. This means that colored property holders
are taxed to build school buildings for white people. . . (Th^ Basis of Racial Adjust–
[1925], pp. 154-155.)
® “The universality of the property tax burden is often ignored in current tax dis-
cussion. Many members of the community, it is sometimes said, are ‘exempt* from taxes,
since they are so poor that they pay no income taxes, health duties, or gift taxes, and
own no taxable property. They are, however, exempt only in the sense that they have
no direct contact with the tax collector.” (The Twentieth Century Fund, of. cit.y
p. 296.)
® It is indicative of the opportunism of popular beliefs that, while the observer finds
most white people in the South inclined to stress that Negroes pay practically no taxes,
Negroes, on the other hand, show themselves quite sophisticated in the theory of the
incidence of indirect taxation. In 1873 a Negro Reconstruction politician, the Missis-
sippi State Superintendent of Education, Cardozo, expressed what is the Negro theory
in the matter:
“Again it is objected that a general tax compels white men of the State to educate
the children of the Negro. But as the Negro forms a majority of the entire population
of the State, and in an eminent degree a majority of the producing classes, as such
classes of every population—the laborer, tenant, and consumer—indirectly bear the
burdens of taxation, it follows that an assessment upon the property of the State would
be principally paid by the Negro. . . (Quoted in Horace Mann Bond, The Education
of the Negro in the American Social Order [1934], p. 71.)
The Advisory Committee on Education, Refort of the Committee (1938), pp.
20-22 .
®The mean family income in 1935-1936, according to the estimates of the National
Resources Committee, was $1,622 for the country as a whole and $1,326 for the South.
The Mountain and Plains regions, however, which include several states with rather
high expenditures per pupil, showed an average family income ($1,363) which was not
much higher than that for the South. (National Resources Committee, Consumer
Incomes in the United States, Their Distribution in [i 938 ]> PP» 21-22.)
In the South there were in 1930 about 6 children, 5 to 17 years of age, to every 10
adults, 20 to 64 years of age; in the rest of the country there were about 4 children to
every lO adults. (Refort on Economic Conditions of the South, prepared for the Presi-
dent by the National Emergency Council [1938], p. 25; The Advisory Committee on
Education, Refort of the Committee, p. 25). Additional information on income and on
number of children is presented in Chapter 16 of this book.
• A calculation made by the Advisory Committee on Education (The Federal Govern-
nunt and Education [1938], pp. 8 and 12-13), ^ uniform state tax.
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