Tennessee Legislator Praises Three-Fifths Compromise During His House Argument

A Tennessee legislator praised the Three-Fifths Compromise, a 1787 agreement that stated slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a person.

On Tuesday, Republican State Representative Justin Lafferty argued on the state House floor that the Three-Fifths Compromise was used to end racism, which is not true. Lafferty gave his speech during a House debate on a state education bill that would halt funding to school systems that taught critical race theory or systemic racism in their curriculums.

He argued that 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.”

However, Joanne Freeman, who teaches history and early American studies at Yale, responded to Lafferty’s comments by explaining that the Three-Fifths Compromise “had nothing to do with ending slavery.” Instead, it allowed Southern slaveholding-states to count enslaved people who they deemed to be “property” in their count for representation.

“It embedded slavery into the Constitution, enabling Southerners to count their ‘property’ for representation — and thereby to dominate the government to preserve slavery and their hold on power. Yes, Southerners wanted to count the entirety of their enslaved population — their ‘property’ — in their count for representation. The fact that they got only 3/5 of that count hardly counts as a blow against slavery,” Freeman explained.

Lafferty’s office didn’t respond to CNN’s request for comment.

TN State Rep. Justin Lafferty (R) claims the three-fifths compromise — counting Black people as less than a person — was included in the Constitution "for the purpose of ending slavery." pic.twitter.com/A6OpfRIwMd

— The Recount (@therecount) May 4, 2021