Mississippi Unchained

The state of Mississippi owes Steven Spielberg a colossal thank you.

Because of the award-winning director, what any educated, sane person would have expected to have heard a century or more ago finally happened last month.

A staggering 148 years after the United States of America formally abolished the uncivil practice of slavery, Mississippi has finally jumped on the bandwagon.

Back in November, Ranjan Batra, an Indian-born professor at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, saw Spielberg’s film “Lincoln,” which depicts our 16th president’s final months in office.

Abraham Lincoln sought to and ultimately succeeded in passing the abolishment of slavery in Congress.

Batra decided to go online that night and see what happened when the states started to ratify the amendment.

He quickly learned that many states — Kentucky, Delaware and New Jersey among them — didn’t ratify the amendment until the 20th century.

Mississippi had voted to ratify in 1995, but due to an unknown clerical error, the ratification was never filed with the National Archives’ Office of the Federal Register.

The appropriate people were notified and Mississippi became the 50th state to ratify the 13th Amendment on Feb. 7, 2013.

For anyone like me who isn’t a Constitutional scholar, the 13th Amendment reads as such:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

As far as Constitutional amendments go, it’s a rather light text.

You get the gist of it quickly. You can’t own people and make them do things for you. Because, you know, that’s wrong.

But it should come as no surprise that Mississippi is coming in solid last place in ratifying the 13th Amendment.

They’re pulling up the tail end in plenty of other categories, too.

Mississippi has the lowest per capita income in the United States, reaching barely over $30,000, which is $10,000 short of the national average.

A mere 62 percent of adults have a high school degree, whereas the national percentage is around 80.

Most mind boggling of all, nearly one-third of adults in the region score a “Level 1” on the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, meaning they have the reading skills and comprehension of an elementary school student.

So, in Mississippi’s defense, considering the state’s current rate of illiteracy maybe they just couldn’t read the 13th Amendment.

While it must be stated that the Mississippi congress did attempt to ratify the 13th Amendment in 1995, that’s still 128 years after slavery became illegal in the United States.

Most people currently attending IU were born before 1995.

We were alive when Mississippi still legally rejected the abolishment of slavery.

It shouldn’t come as a shock to know racism is still alive in this country. But to know active racism was still lawfully supported as late as 2013? That’s a whole other story.

It is a government’s position and duty to act as a role model for its citizens, be it the federal government or small-town local government.

I know kind, compassionate people from Mississippi who don’t represent the ideals reflected in the state’s legislation, and it offends me to know these people will be forced to hang their heads in shame over a prejudiced government.

I can only hope Mississippi’s government won’t continue to perpetuate these archaic morals.

But, if they do, maybe we can look forward to same-sex marriage ratification by 2171.

­— wdmcdona@indiana.edu