page_title: Constitution of Mississippi
section_title: 1890 constitution
hierarchical_section_title: Constitution of Mississippi / History / 1890 constitution
caption_attribution_description: English: 'This is a White Man's Government!' (September 1868), 'Harper's Weekly'
context_page_description: 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.
  Since becoming a state, Mississippi has had four 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. It ended 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.
context_section_description: The current constitution of Mississippi was adopted on November 1, 1890, having replaced the 1868 constitution that had been adopted and ratified following the end of the American Civil War to bestow freedoms and civil rights upon newly freed slaves.
caption: During much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Democrats, calling themselves "The White Man's Party", sought to violently disenfranchise African Americans in the name of patriarchal white supremacy, by using party-sponsored paramilitaries and terrorist organizations such as the "Red Shirts". Using as their party slogan, "This is a White Man's Country!", the Democrats opposed the Republican-sponsored "Reconstruction Acts", which required that the former Confederate states adopt the Fourteenth Amendment and respect the right of African Americans to vote if they were to fully rejoin the United States.[24] An 1868 political cartoon from Harper's Weekly, showing a former Confederate soldier and two Democrats triumphantly standing on the back of a U.S. Colored Troops veteran, condemns and criticizes the Democrats' efforts.
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