
The American Constitution DENIES BLACKS CITIZENSHIP AND COUNTS THEM AS THREE FIFTHS OF A PERSON
Most of the originators of the American constitution were slave owners, and none believed in racial equality for a minute, despite all the subsequent propaganda to the contrary. As with the Amerinds - who were regarded as a completely separate alien nation all to themselves, the writers of the American Constitution - George Washington and others - wrote specific provisions into the original American Constitution to deal with the Black population.
None of the writers of the American Constitution even contemplated Blacks being accorded citizenship or voting rights in the new republic. When the Constitution was drafted at the Constitutional Convention held from 25 May to 17 September 1787, the delegates agreed that the US Congress should be elected on the basis of the size of the population in the various states making up the union - that those states with the larger populations should have more seats than those with smaller populations.
However a dispute arose: as the majority of Blacks were in the Southern states, and were specifically excluded from having the vote, the White leaders from the Northern states argued that the Black population should not be counted for purposes of representation, saying that the number of seats held by Southern states in the lower house of the national legislature should be based solely on their White population.
The White leaders from the Southern states however argued that this method of apportioning seats did not recognize the wealth and importance of their states; they wanted slaves to be counted equally with the Whites - then known by the phrase "free people."
Finally a compromise was reached and written into the Constitution: each Black would be counted as three fifths of a person for purposes of counting the population of a state. Thus it was written into Article 1, Section two of the American Constitution that:
Posted By: DAVID JOHNSON
Thursday, January 6th 2011 at 12:26PM
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