The Us Constitution: A Tool To Oppress African Americans

The US Constitution has been criticised for its role in oppressing African Americans. While the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments abolished slavery, provided equal protection under the law, and granted African American men the right to vote, the Constitution also contained provisions that perpetuated racial inequality. Notably, the Three-Fifths Compromise counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person in state populations, giving southern states extra representation. The Constitution also prohibited Congress from outlawing the Atlantic slave trade for 20 years and included a fugitive slave clause, protecting slavery and delaying its abolition. Furthermore, despite the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship, legal challenges and Jim Crow laws undermined its protections, relegating African Americans to second-class citizenship. The Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 further entrenched segregation, and discriminatory voting practices continued despite the 15th Amendment, demonstrating the enduring struggle for African Americans to achieve equal rights and full participation in American society.

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The Three-Fifths Compromise

Slaveholding states wanted their entire population to be counted to determine the number of Representatives those states could elect and send to Congress. Free states wanted to exclude the counting of slave populations in slave states, since those slaves had no voting rights. A compromise was struck to resolve this impasse. The compromise counted three-fifths of each state's slave population toward that state's total population for the purpose of apportioning the House of Representatives, effectively giving the Southern states more power in the House relative to the Northern states.

This agreement came to be known as the Three-Fifths Compromise: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other Persons."

The three-fifths ratio originated with an amendment proposed to the Articles of Confederation on April 18, 1783. The amendment was to change the basis for determining the wealth of each state, and hence its tax obligations, from real estate to population, as a measure of ability to produce wealth. The proposal by a congressional committee suggested that taxes "shall be supplied by the several colonies in proportion to the number of inhabitants of every age, sex, and quality, except Indians not paying taxes."

Fugitive Slave Clause

The Fugitive Slave Clause, also known as the Slave Clause or the Fugitives From Labour Clause, is Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution. It states that a "person held to service or labour" who escapes to another state must be returned to their master in the state from which they fled. The clause was proposed by Pierce Butler and Charles Pinckney of South Carolina during the Constitutional Convention, and notably does not use the words "slave" or "slavery".

The clause was created in the context of a late-18th-century divide between free states and slave states. By 1787, only Vermont and Massachusetts had outlawed or effectively outlawed slavery, while it was a way of life in the American South. The Fugitive Slave Clause was intended to give slaveholders a constitutional right to recover their "property" from another state. This was a significant issue as the proximity of free states to many Southern states meant that enslaved people could more easily escape to freedom.

The Fugitive Slave Clause formed the basis for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which gave slaveholders the explicit right to capture their escaped "property". The enforcement provisions of this act were strengthened in 1850, giving the federal government a role in capturing fugitive slaves. The Supreme Court's interpretation of the Fugitive Slave Clause meant that state laws that penalised the seizure of fugitive slaves by their owners were deemed unconstitutional.

The Fugitive Slave Clause was rendered mostly irrelevant by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery except as punishment for criminal acts.

Prohibition of federal regulation of the slave trade

The US Constitution, ratified in 1788, did not explicitly use the word "slave", but it laid the foundation for the oppression of African Americans. One of the ways it did this was by prohibiting federal regulation of the slave trade.

On August 21, 1787, a heated debate occurred during the Constitutional Convention regarding a South Carolina proposal. The proposal aimed to prevent the federal government from regulating the Atlantic slave trade. Luther Martin of Maryland, a slaveholder himself, argued that the slave trade should be subject to federal regulation. He believed that the entire nation should be responsible for quelling slave revolts. Moreover, Martin considered the slave trade to be at odds with America's republican ideals and the principles of the Revolution, stating:

> "It is inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution... and dishonorable to the American character to have such a feature in the constitution."

However, the framers of the Constitution ultimately conceded to the proposal, believing that concessions on slavery were necessary to gain the support of southern delegates for a strong central government. They were convinced that if the Constitution restricted the slave trade, states like South Carolina and Georgia would refuse to join the Union.

This decision had significant consequences. By sidestepping the issue of slavery, the framers sowed the seeds for future conflict. The Constitution's failure to address slavery directly and its prohibition of federal involvement in the slave trade contributed to the entrenchment of slavery and the oppression of African Americans in the United States.

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The 14th Amendment undermined

The 14th Amendment, passed in 1868, was intended to achieve racial justice and protect the rights of African Americans. However, there have been instances where the amendment has been interpreted in ways that undermine its original purpose.

Firstly, the 14th Amendment has been used to attack affirmative action and efforts to desegregate schools. Conservative judges and commentators have invoked the amendment's guarantee of "equal protection under the laws" to argue for a "colorblind" approach, suggesting that any consideration of race in policies or admissions processes is discriminatory. This interpretation undermines the historical context and intent of the amendment, which was enacted to address the specific oppression faced by African Americans and ensure their equal rights.

Secondly, the 14th Amendment's failure to explicitly address racial discrimination or provide a clear definition of "equal protection" has allowed discriminatory policies to be upheld as constitutional. For example, forced racial segregation in public schools and public spaces, as well as the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, were found to be consistent with the Constitution, despite their clear contradiction of the amendment's spirit.

Thirdly, the 14th Amendment's focus on citizenship and civil rights did not prevent the emergence of Black Codes in the post-Civil War South. These laws restricted the freedoms of newly freed African Americans and forced them into labour arrangements that resembled slavery. While the 14th Amendment provided a legal basis to challenge these codes, it did not prevent their creation or immediate implementation, highlighting a failure to protect the rights it claimed to guarantee.

Lastly, the 14th Amendment's impact was limited by the political and social realities of the time. Despite granting citizenship and equal rights to African Americans, the amendment could not prevent the widespread disenfranchisement and oppression of Black citizens through violence, intimidation, and discriminatory laws. The promise of the 14th Amendment was not fully realized for African Americans during the Reconstruction era, and it would take decades of struggle and further legislation to begin addressing these injustices.

While the 14th Amendment was a significant step towards racial equality, its interpretation and enforcement have been undermined by those opposed to racial justice. The amendment's legacy is a reminder that legal guarantees are only as strong as the collective will to uphold and enforce them.

The 15th Amendment attacked

The 15th Amendment to the US Constitution, passed by Congress on February 26, 1869, and ratified on February 3, 1870, granted African American men the right to vote. This was the third and final Reconstruction Amendment, following the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, and the 14th, which granted citizenship.

Despite the 15th Amendment, within a few years, numerous discriminatory practices were used to prevent Black citizens from exercising their right to vote, especially in the South. These included literacy tests, poll taxes, and ""grandfather clauses" that exempted whites from voting requirements. The Southern Republican Party vanished by the late 1870s, and Southern state governments effectively nullified the 14th and 15th Amendments, stripping Black citizens in the South of their right to vote.

In 1896, the Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson legalized "separate but equal" facilities for the races, further entrenching segregation. For more than 50 years, the overwhelming majority of African American citizens were reduced to second-class citizenship under the “Jim Crow” segregation system.

It wasn't until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that legal barriers to voting were outlawed at the state and local levels. The act banned literacy tests and poll taxes and provided for federal oversight of voter registration in areas with low non-white voter turnout. However, in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the act, removing federal oversight of voting rules in nine states.

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