Editing Three-fifths Compromise (section)

==After the Civil War==
Section 2 of the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]] (1868) later superseded Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 and explicitly repealed the compromise. It provides that "representatives shall be apportioned ... counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed." A later provision of the same clause reduced the Congressional representation of states who denied the right to vote to adult male citizens, but this provision was never effectively enforced.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-3444700477.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714223753/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-3444700477.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=July 14, 2014|title=Fourteenth Amendment|last=Friedman|first=Walter|date=January 1, 2006|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History|url-access=|access-date=June 12, 2013}}</ref> (The [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment]], passed in 1865, had already eliminated almost all persons from the original clause's jurisdiction by banning slavery; the only remaining persons subject to it were those sentenced for a crime to penal servitude, which the amendment excluded from the ban.)

After the [[Reconstruction era]] came to an end in 1877, the former slave states subverted the objective of these changes by using terrorism and other illegal tactics to [[Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era|disenfranchise their black citizens]], while obtaining the benefit of apportionment of representatives on the basis of the total populations. These measures effectively gave white Southerners even greater voting power than they had in the antebellum era, inflating the number of [[Southern Democrats]] in the House of Representatives as well as the number of votes they could exercise in the Electoral College in the election of the president.<ref>Valelly, Richard M.; ''The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement'' University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 134-139 {{ISBN|9780226845302}}</ref>

The disenfranchisement of black citizens eventually attracted the attention of Congress, and, in 1900, some members proposed stripping the South of seats, in proportion to the number of people who were barred from voting.<ref name="committee">{{cite news|title=Committee At Odds on Reapportionment|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1900/12/21/102438623.pdf|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=December 20, 1900|access-date=March 10, 2008}}</ref> In the end, Congress did not act to change apportionment, largely because of the power of the Southern bloc. The Southern bloc comprised Southern Democrats voted into office by white voters and constituted a powerful voting bloc in Congress until the 1960s. Their representatives, re-elected repeatedly by one-party states, controlled numerous chairmanships of important committees in both houses on the basis of seniority, giving them control over rules, budgets and important patronage projects, among other issues. Their power allowed them to defeat federal legislation against racial violence and abuses in the South,<ref name="pildes10">{{Harvnb|Pildes|2013|page=10}}</ref> until overcome by the [[civil rights movement]].