The Larger Gifts of Taxation: Foundations and Tax Reform in the Jim Crow South

Abstract In “Disquisition on Government,” John C. Calhoun divided citizens into “tax-payers” and “tax-consumers,” foreshadowing the connection that would be made between taxation and citizenship rights in twentieth-century education policy and law. Recent scholarship has explored that relationship, analyzing the language of legal cases to demonstrate that court cases reflect citizens’ perceptions of economic stakes and related education rights. Northern foundations that focused on southern education reform during Jim Crow understood the importance of taxpayer perception to education reform and recognized that it was not a byproduct of tax policy but something that might be shaped by it. Foundations influenced education and taxation policies in North Carolina. Although they failed to address inequality and problems of the racial state, their work provides a useful framework for considering the role of both early twentieth-century foundations in education reform and, more generally, the role of foundations in civil society.