On March 16

On this day in ...
... 1995, Mississippi became the last state to ratify the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (image credit) This Reconstruction Amendment, which had taken effect throughout the country more than a century earlier, in 1865, provides:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

(Prior March 16 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)