JACKSON -- Eric Clark, former secretary of state, somehow had missed the mini national controversy caused by the fact that Mississippi just recently ratified the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning slavery.

As everyone knows by now, the Legislature finally got around to approving a resolution ratifying the 13th Amendment in 1995, but that resolution never was filed with the proper federal authorities.

That oversight apparently was made by the office of former Secretary of State Dick Molpus. Current Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann filed the paperwork recently when the oversight was brought to his attention.

Clark followed Molpus as secretary of state in 1996 and served two terms, and voted for the ratification prior to that as a member of the state House in 1995.

Clark, a historian and current executive director of the state Community College Board, said in hindsight he was surprised that Mississippi had not ratified the 13th Amendment as a condition of re-entering the Union after the Civil War.

And on another point for someone to think Molpus or someone in his office purposefully did not filed the resolution has little knowledge of Mississippi politics. Molpus has probably done more in terms of racial reconciliation than any Mississippi politician other than former Gov. Williiam Winter. Molpus did those things knowing at the time they put his political career in peril.

For those efforts he should be praised instead of lambasted because of an honest oversight by his office.