How you can resist funding the government → a survey of tactics of historical tax resistance campaigns → intimidate tax collectors with humiliation attacks → see also

Tax resistance through furniture: The Tax Collectors’ Chair.

From the Wilmington, North Carolina News, 16 June 1972:

Tennessee tax collectors stripped naked by taxpayer

Memphis, Tenn. (UPI) — An irate dry cleaner who wouldn’t pay his taxes forced three state revenue agents to march naked out of his store Thursday and held a fourth hostage while demanding a conference with the governor.

About an hour after Gov. Winfield Dunn arrived at Memphis International Airport from Nashville, black militant dry cleaner LaSaunders Hudson dived headlong out the door of his store into the back seat of a waiting Cadillac driven by black city officials.

The Cadillac sped him away to a meeting with Dunn, whom Hudson wanted to see about his $197 in back taxes. A crowd of 2,000 observing the development on predominantly black Park Street raised a mighty cheer when Hudson made his acrobatic exit.

A few minutes later the hostage revenue agent was brought out by police, supporting him by each arm. From the distance at which newsmen were kept, his face appeared black, whether with bruises or some colored substance it was impossible to tell. He was rushed away in a police car.

Police took up positions in a Black Panther headquarters next door to the black brick dry cleaning store and used a college student friend of Hudson to communicate with the cleaner. The youth, John Smith, frequently scurried out of the Panther headquarters to shove a note through the mail slot of the BHK cleaners. In a few minutes, a reply would pop out of the slot into the street then Smith would take it back to police.

Police said Hudson, who with his partner has refused to pay state taxes “because of the way the black man is treated,” forced three agents — two of them white and one black — to strip to the buff and march out of his store, much to the astonishment of the passersby in predominantly black Park Street.

The three agents spotted a nearby moving van and, obscuring their nudity as best they could, hobbled frantically over to it and grabbed up furniture pads to wrap around themselves. The crowd cheered and applauded.

In the store, police said, Hudson held Don Dunca, chief of field operations for the collection division of the Department of Revenue. Duncan was allowed to remain dressed.

Authorities cordoned off a two-block area around the store. Among the crowd was Isaac Hayes, widely known soul singer clad in pale blue jumpsuit and gold cross, who joined police in a Black Panther office next door trying to convince Hudson to free Duncan. Authorities said Hudson had two young men with him.

Police said Hudson promised he wouldn’t hurt Duncan, but refused to free him until he saw Dunn.

“Is the governor going to talk to us or are police going to have to come in and kill us?” he shouted.

Duncan and agents Vince Tuminello, Lee Mullins — who is black — and John Mabile went into the dry cleaners to collect $197 in back taxes.

“I certainly hated to walk out the door without any clothes on,” said Mabile. “I was embarrassed.

“A crowd of people had already gathered on the street and they cheered and clapped when we walked out,” he said. Shortly after the agents got themselves wrapped with furniture pads, the minister of a nearby church produced three pair of ill-fitting trousers for them.

The agents donned the trousers, tossed away the pads and, bare chested and bare footed, joined police trying to convince Hudson to give up.

Mabile said as the agents were removing their underwear, Hudson advised them that “this is part of the punishment we are going to give the white man for injustices done the black man.”

Word of the excitement spread quickly through the Orange Mound section of Memphis and a crowd of 1,000 or more gathered quickly around the barricades, many expressing disappointment at having arrived too late to see the agents make their initial appearance.

Mabile said when the four agents arrived Thursday at the store, a woman working in the office said Hudsom was not there but called him. Hudson soon arrived, Mabile said.

“He wanted to know how much money he owed and we told him $197,” said Mabile. “He wrote out a check for that amount on the Tri-State Bank of Memphis but I informed him that we could only accept a certified check or cash for back taxes.”

Nonetheless, Mabile said he left the other three agents in the store and went to the bank with the check, where he found insufficient funds to cover it.

“When I came back and handed the check to Hudson and told him it was no good,” Mabile said, “He whipped the gun out and said ‘start taking off your clothes.’ ”

“He made Vince, Lee and myself undress completely and go outside. He kept Don hostage and said he wouldn’t be released unless Gov. Dunn talked to him personally,” Mabile said.

LaSaunders Hudson (right) with his attorney

Follow-up articles elsewhere say that Hudson met with Dunn for an hour and then was taken into custody. Duncan was given medical treatment for swollen hands caused by his hands being bound while he was a hostage (no idea why his face appeared blackened to the reporter). Hudson and his business partner, Wesley Benn, had written letters to state officials announcing that they would refuse to pay taxes because “it is impossible for black citizens of the state of Tennessee and of America to be on a par with other citizens of America.”

It took me a while to find out any more about LaSaunders Hudson and about what happened to him after this incident. Jet magazine did a follow-up, and reported that “Hudson was charged with assault with intent to murder, after a charge of kidnapping was dropped. He was released on $2,000 bond.”

Here’s more about the dramatic tax resistance action of LaSaunders Hudson.

A UPI dispatch from around this date in 1972:

Irate Dry Cleaner Refuses To Pay Tax

Memphis, Tenn. (UPI) — An irate dry cleaner who refused to pay taxes pulled a gun on four state revenue agents Thursday, forced three of them to walk out of his store naked and held the fourth hostage, demanding a conference with the governor.

Gov. Winfield Dunn boarded a plane in Nashville and flew here to meet with Leonard Hudson, 29, described as a black militant partner in the BHK dry cleaning store.

Police said Hudson, who with his partner has refused to pay state taxes “because of the way the black man is treated,” forced three agents — two of them white and one black — to strip to the buff and march out of his store, much to the astonishment of the passersby in predominantly black Park Street.

The three agents spotted a nearby moving van and, obscuring their nudity as best they could, hobbled frantically over to it and grabbed up furniture pads to wrap around themselves. The crowd cheered and applauded.

In the store, police said, Hudson held Don Duncan, chief of field operations for the collection division of the Department of Revenue. Duncan was allowed to remain dressed.

Authorities cordoned off a two-block area around the store.

And from the Geneva Times comes this Associated Press dispatch:

Black protests his taxes by stripping collectors

Memphis, Tenn. (AP) — Three state tax agents were sent naked into the street and another was held hostage for eight hours by a black businessman who demanded — and got — a meeting with Gov. Winfield Dunn over a $167 tax dispute.

The businessman, identified by police as LaSaunders Hudson, 29, met with Dunn over Negro problems for an hour Thursday at a downtown hotel. He claimed he didn’t owe the $167 in back sales taxes because of what he called Tennessee’s willful refusal “to deal with the needs of the black citizens of the state.”

After the meeting, police took Hudson, co-owner of a dry cleaning firm, into custody without charge. He was held overnight in the Memphis jail pending a police meeting today with the district attorney. Police said Hudson’s lawyer requested that he not be questioned until today.

Don Duncan, in his early 30s, was held hostage at pistol point until Dunn flew to Memphis from the state capital in Nashville. Duncan was treated at a hospital for hands swollen from being bound and was released.

The incident began when the four agents went to Hudson’s cleaning firm Thursday morning to collect back sales taxes. They returned shortly before noon after they learned the check Hudson gave them would not clear the bank.

At this point, Hudson pulled a gun on the four agents and ordered three of them to remove their clothes and walk into the street, according to Vince Tuminello, one of the agents released. “He said he would kill him (Duncan) if we did not strip to the skin,” Tuminello said.

He identified the other two agents released with him as Lee Mullins and John Mabile. Tuminello and Mabile are in their 50s and white, Mullins is in his 30s and black.

Hudson, after forcing the trio into the street naked, bound the hands of Duncan, chief of field operations for the state Revenue Department, and put him in the back of the store, police said. Hudson communicated with police through the mail slot in the door and a plate glass window until an auto arrived to take Hudson to his meeting with the governor.

A spokesman for the governor said Hudson and Dunn “talked about several problems confronting blacks in the country, not just Tennessee.”

“The governor said he thought Mr. Hudson was frustrated because of taxes,” Dunn’s spokesman said. “Mr. Hudson told the governor he couldn’t pay the taxes and support his family. He said he realized he had done wrong, he had to face the consequences.”

Today I continue my scan through some of the material at The Sparrows’ Nest Library’s archive of Poll Tax resistance ephemera.

The first issue of the newsletter of the Sherwood and District Anti-Poll Tax Campaign noted “We have already produced lots of stickers and badges and are also responsible for the ‘No Poll Tax Here’ posters which are going up everywhere.”

Though I have yet to see this mentioned explicitly in any of the anti-Poll Tax material, the “No Poll Tax Here” signs, which were designed to be hung in people’s street-facing windows, were echoes of similar signs that were used during the Reform Act tax strike of 1832. One problem with a tax strike is that it is relatively invisible. It is difficult to tell if your neighbors are on strike with you or if you’re out on a limb by yourself. Stickers and badges and signs and other such distinguishing marks can help overcome this invisibility.

That newsletter also mentions frequent door-to-door “membership drive” outreach, an information stall outside the local co-op, and a variety of public meetings. The second issue also recommended this monkeywrenching:

The latest news with the banks is that they are over-worked with applications, so apply for your direct debit [automatic payment of the poll tax], but put Margaret Thatcher’s address, and let’s put a spanner in the works.

Another article reported that government enforcement efforts were being successfully snagged:

Many Scottish councils are now abandoning the use of bailiffs raids against those fined for non-payment, because they have proved so violently unpopular, and — in the face of large scale community mobilisations against them — completely ineffective.

Their plans to turn, instead, to ‘arrestments’ direct from people’s bank accounts have also run into trouble. [In] late-November — the head of Scotland’s clearing banks announced that they “would be unable to cope with thousands of requests to trace the bank account details of thousands of non-payers.” Even if councils insisted on the costly and time-consuming process, he couldn’t guarantee they would be able to find even 5–6% of the names.

Faced with a seeming dead-end in either direction, and an ever growing back-log of court action, Scottish councils are rapidly running out of options. Eric Milligan, head of Lothian region Labour council’s finance department, spoke for many councils when, in December, he admitted: “Such is the scale of the non-payment movement in our region, that we may have to write-off large sums of outstanding poll tax.”

Elsewhere, dole office workers in London have been on strike in protest at management plans to get them to pass claimants details from DSS files straight to poll tax officials. They’ve been joined by other groups of dole office workers who plan to refuse to process “arrestments” of unpaid poll tax from non-payers who are signing on. And in Edinburgh, a group of local government workers are among the latest to announce plans to mount walk-outs if any employee in their department is penalised for non-payment.

Fight Back! was the newsletter of the St. Ann’s Anti Poll Tax Union. One issue included this note:

S.A.A.P.T.U. supports the non-violent “Robin Hood” invation of the Council office meeting when the Poll Tax was set at £390 by Labour councilors. Three people form Hyson Green and Sherwood A.P.T. groups face charges of assault for throwing “custard pies” at councillors.