A short history of the citizenship question.

AuthorRogers, Carol O.

The 2020 census has been in the news recently because of the decision to reincorporate the so-called "citizenship question" on the short form. Some of us still call it a short form because prior to 2010, there were always two forms --the short one had a small group of questions that went to every household. The long form had more questions and went to a sample of households.

We have less than two years before "Census Day" arrives, that day of counting every person in the United States (including its territories). It sounds simple--count every person living in the United States. But since the first census in 1790, it has been a difficult and time-consuming process, one that once involved U.S. marshals riding out on horseback to interview every household and now has evolved to what we can do in the spring of 2020: answer the census via a secured web connection.

The decennial census long form lives on in the American Community Survey, which goes to a sample of about 4 million households every year--helping to reduce the response burden but still yielding much-used data on education, income, housing--and yes, it even asks about citizenship and naturalization.

We are constitutionally bound in this country to have the federal government conduct a census at least once every 10 years. Here is the original constitutional clause in which the census (enumeration) is established:

This section was later amended by the 13th (1865) and 14th (1868) amendments to the constitution. The heinous practice of slavery was part of the original constitution as were the methods by which the enslaved would be counted. As you will see as you read on and if you turn to the actual list of questions for each census, there were quite specific questions about the slaves held by households on the actual scheduled list. (See "Black and White in Indiana" from an earlier issue of the Indiana Business Review for more on the subject of the census count and Indiana slaveholding practices.)

The first count of persons living in the newly organized and constituted United States of America occurred in 1790, as required by the constitution to count "all persons." At the time, U.S. marshals were the primary census takers, going from home to home and asking for the number of:

* Free white males under age 16 and ages 16 and older

* Free white females

* Other free persons

* Slaves

By 1800, questions were added to get more age detail on "free" and "white" males and females, along with the...

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