Tennessee Lawmaker Is Criticized for Remarks on Three-Fifths Compromise [View all]

NASHVILLE — The Three-Fifths Compromise, an agreement reached during the negotiations in 1787 to create the United States Constitution, found that, for the purposes of representation and taxation, only three-fifths of a state’s enslaved people would be counted toward its total population. It is regarded as one of the most racist deals among the states during the country’s founding.

Yet in a speech in the Tennessee General Assembly on Tuesday, one representative defended the compromise, arguing that it was “a bitter, bitter pill” that was necessary to curtail the power of slaveholding states and that helped clear the way to ending slavery — remarks that were rebuked by critics, including Black colleagues, as insulting and demeaning.

“By limiting the number of population in the count,” the state representative, Justin Lafferty, a Republican from Knoxville, said on the House floor, participants in the Constitutional Convention “specifically limited the number of representatives that would be available in the slaveholding states, and they did it for the purpose of ending slavery — well before Abraham Lincoln, well before the Civil War.”

The comments came as lawmakers in Tennessee were debating legislation on Tuesday aimed at limiting what public and charter schools can teach students about the influence of institutional racism and privilege.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/us/politics/justin-lafferty-tennessee-three-fifths-compromise.html