EXCERPT:
JARRETT (voice over): “Tennessee State Representative Justin Lafferty took to the house floor Tuesday, delivering an impassioned speech during a debate over legislation aimed at limiting funding to public and charter schools if they teach critical race theory, a practice that sees racism entrenched in laws and institutions and one that has become a prime target for some conservatives lately.”
LAFFERTY: “I’ve heard referenced in here, as you all have, the three-fifth’s compromise. I challenge everybody that can hear my voice, pull out a piece of paper, write down why that compromise was reached.”
JARRETT: “Admittedly speaking off the cuff, Lafferty went on defending what he called a bitter but necessarily compromise, erroneously claiming it was a way to end slavery.”
LAFFERTY: “The three-fifths compromise was a direct effort to ensure that southern states never got the population necessary to continue the practice of slavery everywhere else in the country. By limiting the number of population in the count, they specifically limited the number of representatives that would be available in the slave-holding states. And they did it for the purpose of ending slavery.”
JARRETT: “Yet the three-fifths compromise wasn’t about ending slavery at all. It was one of a number of pro-slavery compromises baked into the Constitution during negotiations in 1787 about congressional apportionment and taxation. What Representative Lafferty failed to mention is that the compromise meant that a state could count three- fifths of its enslaved population toward its total population, even though enslaved people had no rights and certainly couldn’t vote. That gave southern states more representation and effectively more political power. Lafferty’s speech received a round of applause from some of his colleagues, something that Democratic State Representative Antonio Parkinson tells ‘The New York Times’ was, quote, especially stinging. Parkinson went on to tell ‘The Times,’ quote, I thought it was horrible. I don’t care if it’s policy or how you’re counting heads, there’s nothing good about slavery. But Laverty isn’t the only one offering this ahistorical claim about the three-fifths compromise. Last month in Colorado, during a debate on civics education in schools, State Representative Ron Hanks said this.”
HANKS: “The three- fifths compromise, of course, was an effort by non-slave states to not — to try to reduce the amount of representation that the slave states had. It was not impugning anybody’s humanity.”
JARRETT: “Just minutes before Hanks spoke, fellow State Representative Jennifer Bacon urged a different approach.”
BACON: “As someone who was recognized as three-fifths, we do need to understand each other when we talk about these things. There’s something to be said about the literacy of the power in this country and all the steps that were taken to keep people from it.”