Talk:Dolly Johnson

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Did you know nomination[edit]

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:42, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Dolly Johnson, c. 1861
Dolly Johnson, c. 1861

Created by Jengod (talk). Self-nominated at 18:52, 31 May 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Dolly Johnson; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.[reply]

  • I'm wondering if there's a more interesting DYK for Dolly other than the fact that she was purchased by a former president. I don't know if other DYKs have had a similar "fact," but I wonder if we could include something that focuses more on Dolly as a person rather than her interesting fact being that someone famous bought her. Looking at the article, I'm wondering if the references can be improved as they don't follow the typical style of Wikipedia articles (i.e., separating footnotes from references). Significa liberdade (talk) 15:57, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nomination withdrawn. jengod (talk) 19:49, 2 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • Would you please reconsider? I don't understand the ref criticism. It looked like they were saying that you should separate the notes from the refs, but you already do that. If they were actually saying that you shouldn't do that, well, I strongly feel that the way you did it is preferable. Hooks can always be worked on, and there's no need to withdraw because one person didn't like one hook. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 21:25, 2 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • Mandarax Sorry to be so sensitive. It sounds made up but I've gotten physically sick (flu/COVID) in real life with an accompanying extremely grim headache. I'm not really in a state to make changes, or participate in the give and take of the editorial process, so I thought it better just to withdraw. I might be better in a few days but I can't predict and didn't want to ask for special accommodation. Brain is temporarily broken! Don't know when it will be fixed! jengod (talk) 02:01, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      • There's no pressing time limit. I hope you feel better soon, and when you do, this can resume. (Someone may even drop by to review it before then.) MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 03:00, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I'm past the flu, I'm back from vacation, and my phone is fully charged, which means I'm ready to add citations and suggest alts and do whatever else is needed to get this ready for Main. Whoohoo. Bring it on, DYK! :) jengod (talk) 19:44, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging Significa liberdade and Mandarax in case they'd like to continue working with jengod on this. Ping me back if not. My first thoughts are that I also hope for a hook that's more about Johnson herself and that I think the citation/reference structure is fine. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:57, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't reviewing. I just wanted to prevent this from being closed due to a quick decision made while unwell. As far as I'm concerned, you are free to review if you'd like. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 20:30, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Happy to review. Article is new enough, long enough, sourced enough, and neutral. Earwig and spotchecks (citations 1, 22, 30, and 38) came out clean for copyvio/CLOP. Looks like we're just looking for a hook that is more focused on Dolly. Any ideas, jengod? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:07, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Firefangledfeathers The rather depressing truth of the matter is that almost all of the few facts we have of Dolly's life relate to her association with Andrew Johnson. Bleah. Anyway. Some ideas. Happy to entertain anything anyone else might suggest.

  • ALT1 ... that Dolly Johnson (pictured), who had once been enslaved by 17th U.S. president Andrew Johnson, opened her own bakery business in 1881?
SOURCE: Self, John R. (March 17, 1881). "Home and Neighborhood News". Greeneville Herald. Vol. I, no. 4. p. 3. Retrieved 2023-05-09 – via Newspapers.com. URL: https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-greenville-herald-home-and-neighborh/124291608/
SOURCE: n.a. (October 1, 1929). "Johnson's Servant Tells Anecdotes of His Master: William Andrew Johnson Chuckles at Thought of Sharing Spotlight at Hotel; Told to 'Get Measured'". The Knoxville News-Sentinel. Vol. XLIII, no. 281. p. 20. Retrieved 2023-05-12 – via Newspapers.com. URL: https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-knoxville-news-sentinel-johnsons-se/124544890/
SOURCE: https://tennesseehistory.org/eighth-august-emancipation-day-tennessee/
SOURCE: n.a. (December 16, 1886). "Andy Johnson's Home - His Old Home and His Grave, and How They Look - The Old Tailorshop in Which He Formerly Worked". The Iowa State Register (Morning ed.). Des Moines. p. 8. Retrieved 2023-05-09 – via Newspapers.com. URL: https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-des-moines-register-andy-johnsons-h/124294308/

let me know which suits, or none, and I'll brainstorm more. I saw your other notes and will address -- I've written like a dozen Andrew Johnson articles since I wrote this and yes it's overstuffed with detail (which we now cover adequately elsewhere). I'll cut a bunch and feel free to prune more after! Cheers and thank you for working on this. jengod (talk) 04:35, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Cheers back! Give me about 24h to review the hooks, but I'm liking the first two at a glance. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:38, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • , with alts 1 and 2 approved. Can I suggest tweaking ALT1 to say "President Andrew Johnson"? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:50, 4 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • I tweaked it to "17th U.S. President" bc I agree that's crucial context but if it just says "U.S. Prez" it gets corrected bc she wasn't enslaved by him while he was president because {waves hand at Civil War/Lincoln/history generally} but he was a U.S. President who had at one time owned slaves etc. jengod (talk) 05:32, 4 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • P > p done jengod (talk) 16:32, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Jengod, Firefangledfeathers, and Mandarax: "enslaved" typically means to make a free person a slave, right? By my reading of the article, it sounds pretty clear that Dolly was already a slave who Johnson bought. Am I interpreting this correctly? If so, both the approved ALTs should probably be altered. Best wishes, ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:21, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • Others may feel differently, but the way I see it, she was a *legally* enslaved teenager when he bought her but no one is born a slave (disclosure: I just wrote this article yesterday). The action is on the part of the actor who is buying a person, keeping a person in bondage and/or otherwise upholding the system that makes such transactions possible, in this case the then-35-year-old A. Johnson. jengod (talk) 14:34, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Of course, but my point is that that action shouldn't be described as "enslaving", which means something different. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:43, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • OED, enslave"enslave". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
    • 1a. transitive. To make (a person or thing) subject or subordinate to another; to deprive of (esp. religious or political) freedom. [emphasis added]
    • 1b. transitive. Of a passion, habit, belief, inanimate object, etc.: to come to dominate and subjugate the will of (a person, a person's soul, etc.); to limit freedom of choice or action in (a person, an activity, etc.).
    • 2a. transitive. To force (a person or group) into slavery
    • 2b. intransitive. To force a person or group into slavery.
I'm not sure that definitions 2a/b here have primacy although I totally hear you that the connotation somewhat suggests the initial kidnapping/selling. jengod (talk) 16:21, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I feel about the same. To avoid possible confusion, does "who had been the slave of" work? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:38, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I maintain that enslaved by / enslaver is correct here, but I will concede that forgoing debates on language/memes/myths that think themselves in our minds is (for the time being at least) in the best interests of Dolly Johnson's biography and the encyclopedia generally. In which case, I propose:
    • ALT1b ... that Dolly Johnson (pictured), who had once been a slave of 17th U.S. president Andrew Johnson, opened her own bakery business in 1881?

jengod (talk) 17:12, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]


Non-DYK feedback[edit]

Hi Jengod, and anyone else interested. I'm mainly here as a DYK reviewer, but here's some hopefully helpful feedback that doesn't affect the DYK criteria:

  1. I fixed MOS:REFPUNCT errors, but I wasn't systematic about it and would encourage a full pass to find the rest.
  2. Parts of the article go into too much detail about other members of the family, e.g. the paragraph starting with "Andrew and Eliza's first-born daughter Martha ..." and the gazetteer's description of Greeneville.
  3. The tense in the paragraph about the 1870 is tough. Can this all just be put into past tense?
  4. Winston (1928) p. 21 doesn't seem to support the content preceding citation 38. Maybe the page number is off?

Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:07, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Addressed. I think/hope. Thank you for the good notes. jengod (talk) 17:30, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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