Andrew W. Kahrl

Andrew is a professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Virginia, where he specializes in the history of race and inequality in housing, real estate, and land use and ownership in the US. Kahrl is the author of the books The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America (U. Chicago Press, 2024); Free the Beaches: The Story of Ned Coll and the Battle for America's Most Exclusive Shoreline (Yale UP, 2018); and The Land Was Ours: African American Beaches from Jim Crow to the Sunbelt South (Harvard UP, 2012), which received the Liberty Legacy Foundation Award from the Organization of American Historians. Kahrl is a leading expert on the social and environmental history of beaches and coastal development in the US, and previously served as the Principal Investigator and co-author of the African American Outdoor Recreation National Historic Landmark Theme Study for the National Park Service. He has received fellowships and awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, and the National Science Foundation, among others. He writes frequently for the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Boston Review, and other popular publications. Kahrl and his family live in Charlottesville, Virginia.