Revolution Interrupted: Racial and Spatial Effects of the 1969 Tax Reform Act

• In Event: 468 - Regular Session. Racialization of Latinos/as

Abstract

This paper analyses federal responses to the rise in racial nonprofit political mobilizations in the late 1960s, with a focus on Latino organizations funded by the Southwest Council of La Raza. At the height of movements for racial and economic justice, social movement actors deployed nonprofit organizations to advance their plight. Congress responded with the 1969 Tax Reform Act, a reform that prohibited nonprofit organizations from engaging in political processes and that increased federal oversight over private philanthropy. While scholars of nonprofit organizations have recognized that the 1969 Tax Reform Act was a federal policing of the growing power of private foundations and nonprofit organizations, they have largely overlooked the important role of race in deliberations over the congressional reform and the racialized effects of the act. Drawing from oral histories, interviews with nonprofit leaders, and archival research, this paper argues that the tax reform was a response to the dramatic rise of civic engagement projects (i.e. voter registration) and anti-racist militancy of race-based nonprofit organizations. White elites saw both of these processes as an imminent apocalyptic racial “revolution” that challenged their hegemony in democratic institutions. While the federal government strictly linked “politics” with electoral processes, in practice the anti-political mandate de-radicalized nonprofit projects because leaders feared that their actions would be prohibited. I show how despite the 1969 Tax Reform Act’s non-political clause, Latino nonprofit organizations found alternative ways to build political power and wield their authority and expertise.

Author

• Juan Carlos Herrera, University of California-Los Angeles