It's official: Mississippi bans slavery A hundred and forty-
eight years after it became law, and 18 years after passing it,
Mississippi officially ratified the 13th Amendment banning
slavery. The cause of the delay? A clerical error, according to
The Jackson Clarion-Ledger.Continue Reading In 1995, Mississippi
was the only state not to have passed the 13th Amendment. While
it passed unanimously, the resolution was never sent to the
Office of the Federal Register at the National Archives, a
required step. Two University of Mississippi employees — Ranjan
Bantra, a doctor who became a U.S. citizen in 2008 and Ken
Sullivan, who works for the university’s body donation program —
started researching after seeing “Lincoln,” about the 16th
president’s efforts to pass the amendment through Congress.
Sullivan eventually contacted the Mississippi Secretary of
State’s office, which was able to fix the error. On Feb. 7, the
Archives wrote back that Mississippi’s ratification was
official. “Now it’s officially filed and re