Article 1, Section 2, of the Constitution, stated which people would be counted to determine the number of Representatives (for each state) in the House, and for taxation purposes.
This was an important number because it gave states power within the Federal Government.
Southern states, with large slave populations, wanted extra power.
However, they didn’t want slaves to be thought of as more than chattel.
As a result, the “Three-Fifths Compromise” was devised in 1787.
The counted people were free (white) men, women, and children, including “those bound to service for a term of years.”
Thus, indentured (white) servants were considered “free.”
(Indentured servitude ended for the most part in 1864, but it wasn’t abolished until 1917.)
The people to be excluded were “Indians not taxed” (Native Americans living in tribal territories) and “three-fifths of all other persons.”
“All other persons” meant slaves.
Thus, a few free Black people were counted as people; but enslaved people were counted as three-fifths of one person, for House Representation and tax purposes.
The 14th Amendment repealed the Three-Fifths Compromise in 1868, but Native Americans living in tribal territories were still excluded from representation.
Twenty years later, the Dawes Act allowed citizenship to those Native Americans who owned land.
However, all Native Americans weren’t declared citizens until 1924.
According to Jefferson and the Indians, by Anthony F. C. Wallace, the Cherokees asked for citizenship as early as 1808.
Stephen Budiansky’s The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War, quotes an address by the Provisional Governor Benjamin F. Perry to the South Carolina constitutional convention in 1865—the early days of Reconstruction.
Perry proclaimed that “to be no longer a slave in no way made the Negro a citizen,” and “this is a white man’s government, intended for white men only. . . To speak of extending political equality to the Negro was nothing but folly and madness.”
Although Perry was mandated by President Johnson to end slavery in his state, he was making sure that the convention of “gentlemen” knew that only they were entitled to full political equality.
South Carolina remained a “white man’s government” for decades after 1865, because Southern men thought it “madness” to elevate Blacks “to the dignity of the white man.”
In George Wallace’s 1963 inaugural address (as governor of Alabama), Wallace declared that “in the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth” he would protect “separate racial stations” with “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
(The libraries and schools for Black Alabama children would NOT be as well provided for as those for white children.
However, there would be libraries and schools of some mean sort.)
All over this country, there are still big differences between schools and libraries in exclusively Black neighborhoods versus those in White neighborhoods.
The film Killers of the Flower Moon (based on the David Grann book) is scheduled to be released on October 20th.
It’s about members of the Osage tribe being murdered for oil money.
I’ve read that David Grann outlines the back story.
The Osage tribes, and the U.S., made a treaty in 1808 in which they were to be protected on a portion of their own land.
A few years later, the Government broke its’ word and moved them to Kansas.
After Kansas became popular with white settlers, the Osage were moved (once more) to Oklahoma, where oil was found, making them wealthy.
The local white power structure, of the 1920s, felt that only they were entitled to the wealth of the land. Therefore, many people were murdered.
Although immigrants were categorized as “exotic novelties” down to “wretched refuse (of your teaming shore),” being an immigrant didn’t stand in the way of gaining wealth.
Between 1815-1860, the three richest men in the U.S.—Frenchman Stephen Girard, German-born John Jacob Astor, and Irishman Alexander Turney Stewart—were all immigrants.
Immigrants are still among the wealthiest people: Chinese-born Eric Yuan, South African-born Elon Musk, and Nigerian-born Tope Awotona, among others.
According to recent study,* immigrants are 80% more likely to found companies, than those born in the U.S.
(Perhaps, the main reason immigrants start new companies is because it’s impossible to get ahead working for others.)
For generations, there was more economic disparity between rich and poor in Europe, than in the U.S.
However, the balance shifted dramatically around 1980.
Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, by Kevin Phillips, analyzes how the superrich have harvested privileges—at the expense of the lower and middle classes—despite the U.S. being a democratic society.
Wealth and Democracy was written twenty years ago.
In 2002, CEOs made 145 times as much as a typical worker.
By 2022, CEOs made 344 times as much as a typical worker.
Now, the average Fortune 500 CEO salary is $15.9 million a year, while the average worker salary is $61,900 a year.
When people speak up for unions, parity, and a safety net, they’re dismissed as communists.
However, cut-throat Darwinian capitalism was never a good fit with democracy.
It dismisses the worker as just a cog, and raises up the “job-creators” above all others.
(Consumers are the true job-creators.)
This isn’t a battle between capitalism and communism; it’s a battle of entitlement.
Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt died in November of 1962.
In one of her last essays “The Social Revolution,” published in Tomorrow is Now, she discusses issues that are still crucial today:
It is this minority of strident and prejudiced people, with their unwillingness to accept race equality—at whatever cost—who provide the Communists with most of their ammunition against the democratic system, who are loudest in their expression of hatred for Communism. . .this recurring matter of labeling “Communist” anyone who does not agree with you is essentially an act of dishonesty and it should be nailed every time for what it is.
*”Immigration and Entrepreneurship in the United States,” Azoulay, Jones, Kim, and Miranda, Vol. 4, No.1, March 2022, American Economic Review: Insights.
