Free At Last

From Yahoo:
"Thanks to 'Lincoln,' Mississippi Has Finally Definitely Ratified the Thirteenth Amendment"

A middle-aged recent immigrant from India recently set into motion a series of events that eventually led to Mississippi finally ratifying the Constitutional amendment banning slavery. The rousing finale of the movie Lincoln served as inspiration. It sounds like a joke, but it's true. And even though it's been nearly 150 years since that fateful day in the Capitol in 1864, Mississippi's becoming the final state to officially ratify the Thirteenth Amendment serves as the final punctuation mark on a dark chapter in American history.  The circumstances for Dr. Ranjan Batra almost inadvertently inserting himself into Mississippi state history are accidental at best. After seeing Lincoln in theaters last November, he went home and did a little bit of Internet research only to discover the Mississippi never got around to actually ratifying the amendement. The state did vote to ratify the amendment back in 1995, nearly 20 years after Kentucky, the second-to-last state to ratify the amendment, held its vote. However, through an apparent clerical error, Mississippi never officially notified the United States Archivist of the ratification, meaning that they've officially been on the side of slavery for a century-and-a-half. (That sounds kind of sensational when you put it like that, but heck, you'd think the state would double check on an issue as big as this.) Batra and his friend Ken Sullivan reported the mistake up the chain of command, and this month, Mississippi finally sent in the paperwork to complete its belated ratification of the Thirteen Amendment.

^ It's not surprising that it was a Southern state. I'm sure they just "forgot" to ratify the 13th Amendment that ended slavery. Not only was Mississippi part of the Confederacy, but also strongly against the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950-60s. I wonder what other laws have not be ratified around the country. ^

http://news.yahoo.com/thanks-lincoln-mississippi-finally-definitely-ratified-thirteenth-amendment-024920825.html