Side-Eye Post Of The Day: Mississippi Finally Ratifies Slavery Ban After "Clerical Error"

Yet more proof that my family's decision to leave Mississippi in 1923 was wise, & folks ain't been back since

Yeah, right! I guess better later than never. And don't get me started on how it took the state legislature until 1995 to ratify the amendment in the first place. The New York Daily News discusses this side-eyeing mess: "The State of Mississippi officially ratified the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery....nearly 150 years after most of the states in the union did. The gross delay, fixed earlier this month, was the result of a clerical error that left unrecorded what many state officials thought was its official ratification nearly 20 years ago. The Mississippi Legislature had actually formally ratified the historic amendment in 1995, which even then was more than a century late, but because the ratification document was never presented to the U.S. archivist, it was never considered official."

The article continues: "According to The Clarion-Ledger, the bizarre error was discovered by a pair of patriotic Mississippians, who, after seeing the movie 'Lincoln,' looked up historical accounts of Mississippi's action and brought to the attention of state officials that they had never, in fact, ratified one of the most important documents in modern history. The 13th Amendment, which outlawed all slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime, was passed by the U.S. Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House of Representatives on Jan. 31, 1865."

Bookerista Response

Chidike Okeem, a conservative Republican in California, writes: "DISGRACE!!! I don't buy the 'clerical error' story. Mississippi should be ashamed!"