One would certainly have thought, after all these 149 years, all states would have ratified the 13th amendment long before 2013. Not so for the state of Mississippi. Mississippi finally officially ratified the amendment on February 7, 2013.
In what seems like a very odd tale, it seems that Mississippi failed to file the proper paperwork until January 30 of this year when a new American citizen and Indian immigrant, Dr. Ranjan Batra, an associate professor of neurobiology and anatomical sciences at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, saw the movie “Lincoln.” Dr. Batra became curious as to which states ratified the amendment and when.
He found out that the ratification failed to pass in Mississippi in 1865, and when the state officials attempted to fix the oversight by ratifying the amendment in 1995, somehow the paperwork did not make it to the proper U.S. government offices in Washington.
Dr. Batra contacted friend, Delbert Hosemann, the Mississippi Secretary of State, and the paperwork was finally properly filed.
Thus, all 50 states have ratified the 13th amendment, officially freeing the slaves, albeit Mississippi was just a tad tardy in their ratification.
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