The “not so great” state of Mississippi has FINALLY “officially” ratified the 13th amendment to the US constitution, which abolishes slavery and which was officially noted in the constitution on 6 December 1865 and it only took them 147 years.
Two academics Dr Ranjan Batra and Ken Sullivan embarked on research prompted after watching Lincoln, Steven Spielberg‘s Oscar-nominated film. Sullivan remembered that a 1995 move to ratify the 13th amendment had passed the Mississippi Senate and House which at that time was only 130 late and racked down a copy of the bill and learned that its last paragraph required the secretary of state to send a copy to the office of the federal register, to officially sign it into law which they had not.
Sullivan then contacted the current Mississippi secretary of state, Delbert Hosemann, who filed the paperwork for the passage of the bill on January 3oth. The bill passed on February 7th. Hosemann said the passage of the bill “was long overdue”.
No shit.
Given how the criminal justice system is still used to oppress minority groups, maybe Mississippi shouldn’t even be ratifying it even now. I highly recommend Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, which is probably the best political book I’ve read since The Shock Doctrine. Her argument is that slavery was replaced by Jim Crow which was later replaced by the justice system (mostly the War on Drugs). Anyway, slavery as such may be outlawed in this country but perpetual servitude is not.