Here's an article from ABC News about how the state of Mississippi finally abolishes slavery last month. Although the law was passed in 1995 the protocol to make it a law was never followed through until now. It took two medical school colleagues, one an immigrant from India, the other a
life-long Mississippian, to join forces to resolve a historical oversight
that until February 2013 had never officially been corrected.WHY? Because legislators in the state obviously didn't care and likely thought that slavery should still be legal (yes, there are a lot of those twisted people).
SO, do you think that a state like Mississippi, that still legally allowed for slavery until this year, should be trusted with providing people like equal rights (i.e. marriage equality)? I don't think so. Right now the Supreme Court is hearing cases to strike down the law that prevents our marriage from being recognized by the Federal Government and in all states of the U.S. - But this is the kind of prejudice should not stand in the land where all are supposed to be equal.
I've lived in 12 states and many states in our south and heartland still believe that not everyone is equal.
African-Americans should be especially outraged by Mississippi, as should ALL people - and we should all come together to strike down ALL laws that treats anyone differently.
Mississippi Finally and Officially Abolishes Slavery, Ratifies 13th Amendment
Until February 7, 2013, the state of Mississippi had never submitted the required documentation to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, meaning it never officially had abolished slavery.
ABC NEWS (Ben Waldron): |
| Miss. 13th Amendment. Mark Humphrey/AP Photo |
Dr. Ranjan Batra, professor of Neurobiology and Anatomical sciences at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, told ABC News he was inspired to investigate the history of the Thirteenth Amendment in his state after a viewing of the film “Lincoln.”
“At the end of the story there was an open question about how the ratification process proceeded,” he said. “Living in the South as I do, I found that a pretty big open question.”
So Batra proceeded to do some investigating of his own, noticing on the website usconstitution.net, that there was an asterisk next to the state of Mississippi in connection with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.
“Mississippi ratified the amendment in 1995, but because the state never officially notified the US Archivist, the ratification is not official,” reads the statement on the website. Batra felt compelled to act to rectify the clerical oversight.
“Mississippi gets a lot of bad press about this type of stuff and I just felt that it is something that should be fixed, and I saw every reason that could be done,” he said. “Everyone here would like to put this part of Mississippi’s past behind us and move on into the 21st century rather than the 19th.”
So Batra enlisted the help of University of Mississippi Medical Center colleague Ken Sullivan, who took an immediate interest in the story, calling the national archives to confirm that they had in fact never received the proper paperwork. Sullivan then took a trip to the state archives to acquire a copy of the bill.
“The last paragraph [of the bill] directs the Secretary of State of Mississippi to inform the national archives of the law of the ratification which is exactly the way ratification is supposed to proceed, but that hadn’t been done for whatever reason,” said Batra.
