By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
April 29, 2025
Days after making national news for claiming in a social media post that the Three-Fifths Compromise “helped to root out slavery,” Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith is accusing others of spreading falsehoods about U.S. history.
Beckwith claimed he told the “REAL meaning” behind the compromise and how it “set the stage for slavery’s ultimate destruction.” He then blamed “radical Democrats” and “the woke mob” for pushing “revisionist garbage” in order to tear the country apart.
“The fact that my video has generated so much backlash just proves that our education system has been corrupted by the woke mind virus,” Beckwith wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “They don’t want educated citizens – they want indoctrinated activists.”
James Madison, a renowned Indiana historian and professor emeritus of history at Indiana University, described Beckwith’s version of the Three-Fifths Compromise with one word: “ludicrous.”
The provision to count individual slaves as three-fifths of a person was a compromise to get the southern states to sign the U.S. Constitution drafted in 1787. Allowing enslaved people to be counted as part of the population enabled slave-holding states like Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia to have more representation in Congress than the northern states.
Madison said the Three-Fifths Compromise provided the southern states with the power “to enact their view of slavery and of the nation much more efficiently and effectively” than they could have otherwise. It enabled the South to push through legislation, he said, that probably would not have passed, such as the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.
Under the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Missouri Compromise, which limited the growth of slavery, was repealed and replaced with popular sovereignty, according to the U.S. Senate Historical Office. That meant the settlers in the new territories were thus able to decide for themselves whether they wanted slaves, sparking violent clashes between proslavery and antislavery activists.
Eventually, the Three-Fifth Compromise, Madison said, led the country to the Civil War.
The historian said he is outraged by Beckwith’s comments on the Three-Fifths Compromise. The lieutenant governor did not make a factual error, Madison said, but, rather, presents a misunderstanding of the nation’s past.
“This is damaging citizenship,” Madison said of Beckwith’s misrepresentation. “It’s damaging to our understanding of who we are and why we are what we are and all the perspectives, the depths of thought that make it possible to function in a democracy. It’s throwing mud in the face of citizenship when you deny our past.”
The Indiana Black Legislative Caucus denounced Beckwith’s comments as a “whitewashed history lesson.” In a statement, Rep. Earl Harris Jr., D-East Chicago, chair of the IBLC, explained the math of the Compromise as five enslaved Black people were at that time considered equal to three free white individuals.
“To argue that the Three-Fifths Compromise was the North’s attempt at playing ‘the long game’ to undermine the South is not just a gross misunderstanding of history, it’s a purposeful whitewashing of it for political gain and media attention,” Harris said. “To this day, the ghost of the Three-Fifths Compromise still haunts Black Americans. From restrictions on voting rights to implicit bias in health care to an unjust justice system, too many people in power still view Black Americans as ‘less-than.’”
Beckwith made the video and posted it to social media after the April 24 debate on the Indiana Senate floor over Senate Bill 289. The measure generated controversy throughout the 2025 legislative session, convincing some Republican lawmakers to join their Democratic counterparts in opposing the bill. In early February, Beckwith ignited anger by saying the Hoosier state had “torpedoed woke indoctrination,” in a social media post that landed while lawmakers in the Senate were still debating the original version of SB 289.
The bill passed both chambers but had to go to conference committee at the end of the session. Both the House and the Senate passed the conference version of SB 289 on April 24.
During the April 24 debate, author Sen. Gary Byrne, R-Byrneville, told the Senators that SB 289 would “keep discrimination out of Indiana government” by prohibiting state agencies, public universities and public schools from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, national origin or ancestry. Although the language in the measure had been softened from the original anti-DEI (diversity equity and inclusion) focus, Democrats still criticized the legislation as allowing unequal treatment of minorities and women.
Sen. La Keisha Jackson, D-Indianapolis, referenced the Three-Fifths Compromise when she spoke against SB 289. She noted the Founding Fathers included the compromise provision in the 1787 Constitution but the country had later tried to negate the impact of that clause by ratifying the 14th Amendment, which established birthright citizenship, and the 15th Amendment, which expanded voting rights to Black men.
Describing SB 289 as a “fight against racial equality,” Jackson said DEI has become a “bad statement,” because it is associated with Blacks and African Americans. She said replacing DEI with a focus on merit, excellence and innovation (MEI), which Republican Gov. Mike Braun has sought, will not work because the Constitution does not reflect fairness and racial equality.
“(Are) we scared to give our friends and neighbors, minorities, a helping hand? Because they do need it,” an emotional Jackson said. “Our Constitution reflects it. We’re not on an equal playing field. Merit is not going to count when they don’t have the same things as our white counterparts have.”
Byrne tried to counter Jackson’s comments about the Three-Fifths Compromise. He denied the provision was rooted in racism and said it actually came about in a battle between the northern and southern states over electoral votes.
“It wasn’t because the Black person was three-fifths of a man,” Byrne said of the compromise. “That’s not true. That’s not what that Three-Fifth ever was about.”
Sitting on his desk and talking directly into the camera, Beckwith, in his social-media video post, asserted the Three-Fifths Compromise enabled slavery to be eradicated from the United States. He blamed DEI in education and said “professors at woke schools” are not teaching what actually happened in the nation’s past.
“(The students are) not taught that today, and that’s why you had the Senate Democrats who were getting up talking about the Three-Fifths Compromise like it was some sort of terrible thing in our past,” Beckwith said. “It was not. It actually was the exact opposite that helped to root out slavery and lead us into a more perfect union that we now see, where black, white, red, brown, all people can have equal representation under the law.”
The Indiana Senate Democratic Caucus also condemned Beckwith’s comments, calling his defense of the Three-Fifths Compromise “historically false” and “morally bankrupt.” Pointing to other bills that altered school curriculum and Braun’s executive order that eliminated Indiana’s Office of Equity, Inclusion and Opportunity, the caucus said the lieutenant governor’s statements were part of a strategy.
“Lt. Gov. Beckwith’s repeated attempts to distort history, dehumanize marginalized communities and whitewash oppression are not isolated missteps,” the caucus said in a statement. “They are part of a deliberate, dangerous movement that mirrors the toxic playbook unfolding in Washington and beyond – a movement that seeks to erase truth, marginalize entire communities and dismantle the progress generations of Americans fought to achieve.”
Indianapolis historian Leon Bates said he is not sure why Beckwith made those comments, speculating the lieutenant governor was either trying to appease a certain constituency or does not know the history of the Three-Fifths Compromise.
Whatever the reason, Bates said Beckwith’s take on history was ill-informed. The Compromise, Bates said, was made to get the South to sign the Constitution. Being able to count each slave as three-fifths of a person gave the southern states more voting power in the U.S. House of Representatives without having to extend any voting rights to the slaves, which helped entrenched slavery further.
Bates said glossing over or misrepresenting history can be damaging, because future generations will be ignorant of what actually happened. He noted Indiana has its own shameful past of racism, but, in at least one instance, it erased the ugly truth.
The original version of the Indiana Constitution, written in 1851, Bates said, included language in Article 13 that forbid “Negroes and mulattoes” from settling in the state and required Blacks already living here to register with their county and post a bond. Hoosiers looking for the provision today will not find it, because the Indiana General Assembly removed the language in the late 20th century.
Bates noted the U.S. Constitution left in “those bad, ugly things” like the Three-Fifth Compromise, but made them inoperative by updating the document with the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. Indiana, he said, took the opposite approach and deleted that section of its constitution altogether.
“That’s the danger when you… take out something that’s really bad,” Bates said. “You give people the impression that it never happened or it can be ignored.”
Bates said Beckwith’s comments are having a similar effect.
“He’s opening old wounds with some people. He is irritating other people. Some people may be cheering him on,” Bates said. “But at the end of the day, it’s unnecessary, no matter how somebody looks at it, that we are having this discussion. It did not have to happen. It was something that he chose to do and now you hear how it’s turning out.”
Dwight Adams, an editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.
The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.
