Constitution of Mississippi

Constitution of the State of Mississippi
The front cover of the 1890 constitution of Mississippi.
Created	August 12, 1890 – November 1, 1890
Ratified	November 1, 1890
Date effective	November 1, 1890
Location	William F. Winter Archives and History Building Jackson, Hinds County, Mississippi, U.S.
Author(s)	Solomon Saladin Calhoon (1890 convention president)
Signatories	Solomon Saladin Calhoon (1890 convention president)
Purpose	To replace and supersede the Mississippian state constitution that was adopted on May 15, 1868 and ratified by the state on December 1, 1869.

The Constitution of the State of Mississippi, also known as the Mississippi Constitution, is the governing document for the U.S. state of Mississippi. It describes and enumerates the structures and functions of the Mississippian state government and lists the rights and privileges that are held by the state's residents and citizens. It was adopted on November 1, 1890.

Throughout its existence as a U.S. state, Mississippi has had four state-level constitutions. The first one was created in 1817, upon Mississippi's ascension from a U.S. territory to that of a U.S. state. It was used until 1832, when the second constitution was created and adopted to end property ownership as a prerequisite for voting, which was limited to white men in the state at the time. The third constitution, adopted in 1868 and ratified the following year, was the first Mississippian constitution to be approved and ratified by the people of the state at large and bestowed state citizenship to all of the state's residents, namely newly freed slaves. The fourth constitution was adopted in November 1890 and was created by a convention consisting mostly of Democrats in order to prevent the state's African American citizens from voting. The provisions preventing them from voting were repealed in 1975, after the United States Supreme Court in the 1960s had ruled them to have violated the tenets of the Constitution of the United States.

The current Mississippian state constitution has been amended and updated several times in the more than twelve decades since its original adoption in November 1890, with some sections being changed or repealed altogether. The most recent modification to have been made to the state's constitution occurred in June 2013.

A few months before the start of the American Civil War in April 1861, Mississippi, a slave state located in the southern U.S., declared that it had seceded from the United States and joined the newly formed Confederacy, and it subsequently lost its representation in the U.S. Congress. Four years later, with the victory of the Union at the end of the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery via the newly enacted Thirteenth Amendment, a new Mississippian state constitution was created in 1868, to bestow citizenship and civil rights upon newly freed slaves in the state. Mississippi regained its congressional representation after it was fully readmitted back into the United States in February 1870.