To the editor:
I would like to correct and counter Kae Luppens’ 24 April Letter to the Editor.
First, blacks were given the right to vote in the 15th Amendment in 1870, not the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Second, the 3/5ths compromise was not about reducing the worth of blacks, it was about reducing the power of the South. The northern states didn’t want to count slaves at all for numeration to calculate representation for Congress, while the South wanted to allow them to be counted. The argument was, why should the South get more representation based on slave population when they afforded blacks no rights as citizens? In other words, the South wanted to count them 5/5 but treat them 0/5.
Ricky Keil
Mehlville
