Alabama Still Paying For Relying On Slavery–Literally

The nation, and particularly the South, is still paying the human cost of slavery–and probably will be paying it until the end of time. But in at least one state, the cost of using humans as property can be measured in real numbers. For most of the antebellum era, one of Alabama’s biggest sources of revenue came from taxes on slaves. Needless to say, the end of slavery blew a huge hole in the state budget. But more than 150 years later, the state has yet to find a way to plug it–and the state’s residents are paying the price in the form of inadequate funding for some of the most rudimentary services.

A must-read story that ran in Sunday’s edition of the Montgomery Advertiser delves into Alabama’s slave tax. Except for a brief period when Alabama became a state in 1819, it was on the books from territorial days to the end of the Civil War. By the 1840s, slaveholders paid 10 cents a head for every enslaved person younger than 10 years old, and 50 cents a head for every slave between 10 and 50 years old. This was changed in 1850; slaveholders paid higher tax rates for slaves who could potentially create more value. To give you an idea of how much value that generated, by 1850 Alabama accounted for 23 percent of the nation’s cotton exports–and as we all know, most of that was generated by slaves on plantations.

As late as the 1850s, the slave tax was THE biggest source of revenue in Alabama. For most of the period before the Civil War, slaveholders bore most of the state’s tax burden. According to Susan Pace Hamill, a professor at the University of Alabama and an expert on Alabama’s tax system, the reliance on the slave tax made Alabama’s tax code “progressive” in a grotesque sort of way, since “the burden fell more on those able to pay.”

By the time of the Civil War, real estate taxes replaced slave taxes as the largest source of revenue, but the slave tax still took up a hefty chunk–enough to throw the state’s budget completely out of whack when the war ended. When the Republicans took control of state government after Reconstruction, they tried to raise property taxes–essentially the only revenue stream left. However, that shifted the tax burden to smaller landowners. The resulting furor among small landowners was one of many reasons why the Republicans were tossed out in short order at the end of Reconstruction. The re-empowered Democrats wrote a new constitution that imposed caps on property taxes, which became even tighter when the current state constitution was enacted in 1901.

When most people think of the Alabama state constitution, they think of how language mandating a segregated school system is still written into that document even though it has been effectively void since Brown v. Board of Education. But what most people don’t know is that the very same document makes raising taxes only slightly easier than finding a needle in a haystack. Much of Alabama’s tax code is actually written into the constitution. As a result, mundane tax issues must be addressed by constitutional amendment rather than by statute–a major reason Alabama has the longest constitution at any level in the world.

Through it all, no one from either side of the aisle has thought to find a way to make up for the loss of the slave tax. Indeed, in the 1970s, the state actually enacted even tighter restrictions on property taxes. And ever since the Republicans took the state trifecta in 2010, they haven’t met a tax cut they didn’t like–as has become standard operating procedure whenever Republicans have total control.

As a result, for years Alabama has struggled to find enough money to pay for basic state services. To give one example, the state’s general fund is only slated to grow by $25 million in fiscal 2018. Medicaid alone has asked for an additional $44 million in that year. Finding a way to make up that shortfall is going to be extremely difficult to say the least. In addition to the aforementioned caps on property taxes, income tax rates are effectively frozen at Depression-area levels.

Most of us are very wary about raising taxes. But at the same time, we expect our government to be at least halfway competent. Like it or not, better quality of life is something for which we should all be willing to pay. Unless the powers that be in Alabama are willing to make some tough decisions, its people are still going to pay the price for building their economy on the backs of slavery. It’s something that should have been done a century and a half ago–but better late than never.

(featured image courtesy DXR, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.