Although African-Americans have achieved much in the past 200 years, certain language in the U.S. Constitution remains stuck in the past. New York York City Council Member Andy King hopes to eliminate that language.
Last week, King, along with union and community leaders, held a news conference at City Hall calling for the removal of language in the three-fifths clause that’s still in the constitution. He’s also calling for New York City to recognize March 5 as Three-Fifths Clause Awareness Day.
“It is completely and utterly unacceptable that the ‘three-fifths clause’ still remains to be etched into the Constitution, never to be removed, and its only present value is that it serves as a reminder of our nation’s dark past in the areas of race relations and political representation as it pertains to African-Americans, and other enslaved people at the time of its inception,” stated King.
Known as the Three-Fifths Compromise, the language was added to the Constitution in 1787 to accommodate Southern voters who supported slavery and wanted more political power and representation in Congress. Southern citizens wanted their slaves counted as full people, but settled on counting them as three-fifths of a person. Although the 13th Amendment officially freed slaves after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment gave them citizenship and the 15th Amendment gave them the right to vote, the three-fifths language wasn’t removed from the Constitution.
“It was an offensive clause,” added NAACP New York State Conference President Hazel Dukes. “How humiliating it is to count a man as three-fifths of another? But this is a part of our U.S. history that helped shape some racist behaviors, such as Jim Crow. More people need to be made aware of the Three-Fifths Clause, that it still exists in the U.S. Constitution and let’s do something about it.”
King and Dukes were joined by the likes of Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, the NYCHA Tenant Association of Gun Hill Houses in the Bronx, the National Action Network, the Civil Service Employee Association and Congressman Greg Meeks.
“Although a majority of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 deemed such a compromise as necessary to establishing the United States of America and its system of government, history recognizes that the Three Fifths Clause was one of the worst of many foundational compromises with slavery,” stated Meeks. “Awareness of our history—the good, the bad, the ugly—can help us summon the courage and wisdom and unity to make the descendants of slaves whole, which is a precondition for making America whole.”
