Some hopes die hard. We saw the news that the
State of Confederacy Mississippi finally got around to submitting the paperwork
needed to ratify the 13th Amendment to the Constitution banning slavery. Maybe someone saw the film "
Lincoln" and decided to double check, but it's noteworthy that Mississippi was the very last state to ratify the Amendment. The hard core of the Confederacy ran from South Carolina westward through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, and they haven't given up their notions of a "lost cause" easily; it's why you still see the Confederate flag, literally
the flag of treason, incorporated into many of their state flags. Maybe it's why some Mississippians
recently confused the State flag with the Confederate battle flag, and flew it above the State Supreme Court for a few hours before someone pointed out the error.
We wonder if the words from the '60s civil rights era folk song "
Here's to the State of Mississippi" by the late Phil Ochs still resonate:
Here's to the state of Mississippi,
For underneath her borders, the devil draws no lines,
If you drag her muddy rivers, nameless bodies you will find.
Oh the fat trees of the forest have hid a thousand crimes,
The calendar is lying when it reads the present time.
