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Talk:Fannie Lou Hamer/GA2

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GA Review[edit]

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Reviewer: Ritchie333 (talk · contribs) 14:03, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]


I'll take this one - I see many of the issues from the first GA review have been addressed. I'm still a bit concerned about some of the prose and sourcing, and have tagged immediate issues. I tend to copyedit as I go and raise issues accordingly. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 14:03, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Lead[edit]

  • "(The people she worked alongside suffered similarly as well, with at least one acolyte killed.)" - why is this here, in brackets?
  • "She later led thousands of African-Americans in Mississippi to the polls" - I don't think she personally rounded up thousands of people and marched them to the polling boths; maybe this should be toned down eg: "she encouraged thousands of African-Americans in Mississippi to vote"
  • "In 1970 she led legal action against the county of Sunflower County, Mississippi for continued illegal segregation" - a county is an abstract concept and cannot enforce segregation - shouldn't this be "she led legal action against the government of Sunflower County ...." or something similar?

Early life, family and education[edit]

  • "When their animal stock was mysteriously poisoned" - do we know anything more about this?
    • Added more information, mostly a quote from Hamer talking about how she suspects white supremacy was behind it.  Done — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 17:15, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "family moved to Sunflower County in 1919 to work as sharecroppers on W. D. Marlow's plantation." - this implies the whole family worked on the plantation, was that the case?
    • Yes, up until she was forced off it, and then later her husband for her attempting to get registered to vote. Their children I doubt were old enough at that time, so perhaps we could say Mr. and Mrs. Hamer instead of "family"? — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 17:08, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Hamer could pick 200 to 300 pounds of cotton daily" - any chance of a conversion to metric?
  • The last sentence in this section has a "when" tag

Civil rights activism[edit]

  • Do we need the quotation that starts this section? It doesn't really make much sense if the reader hasn't read the rest of the content first
  • "On August 31, 1962, Hamer traveled" - I can't remember if US English has only one "l" - does it?
Simply that my spell-checker puts a red-line under "traveled" suggesting "travelled", which I think is just a mismatch against US / UK English, and just want confirmation there is no actual issue here. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 17:27, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ah! Oh yes, @Ritchie333: It is indeed a common US spelling. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 17:29, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do we know anything more about the literacy test described here? Main reason I ask is we have something similar in the UK for immigrants called the Life in the UK Test (there's a potential Wikipedia article) which you need to pass to gain residency. It's full of things like "what major era of British History ended with the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485?" which many native Britons could not answer.
  • The block quotation about the police beatings seems overly-detailed. Can we simply summarise this in prose?
    • It is possible to. However I would highly prefer if we could keep it, as it's one of the most graphic first-hand deceptions of what blacks had to face in the Southern US all the time just a few years ago. (and honestly till this day to a large extent)... @Ritchie333: I've moved it in the section though, do you think that will work? — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 17:28, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
For me it's overly graphic - we get the basic gist from the rest of the prose that the police were being unreasonable and aggressive without having to go into the specifics. It's also close paraphrasing of a source, which a GA should not have (see criteria 2d). Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 18:10, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "After becoming a field secretary for the SNCC in 1963" - what's the SNCC?
  • "a Mississippi State highway patrolman took out his billy club and intimidated the activists to leave" - what's a "billy club" and would "instructed" or "forced" be better than "intimidated"?
    • A billy club is similar to a police baton (I think that's what you call them across the pond...) I used intimidated here because he didn't actually strike them with it.... more used it in a threatening manner to get them to leave the establishment. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 17:33, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Freedom Democratic Party and Congressional run[edit]

  • "that would give the Freedom Democratic Party two seats" - is this the same party as the "Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party" mentioned earlier?
    • Yes, they are one and the same. Hamer usually only referred to it as the FDP, but others refer to it as the MFDP. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party article needs to be updated to reflect this. (with something like, "also known as the Freedom Democratic Party") — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 17:34, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Later activism[edit]

Honors and awards[edit]

  • This section would sit better as prose than a list. There is one claim I couldn't find in a source (tagged) which says that Hamer is well-known with Tougaloo College but does not specifically mention that she received a honorary degree from them. The "List of tributes" section in particular needs a close check, several are not cited to what I would normally call reliable sources. I wouldn't worry too much about taking a scythe to this one; compare the "Cultural references" section of Trellick Tower before I started work on it to what it is now. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 17:56, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    •  Fixed List is now prose where it needs to be (tributes). I've also removed dubiously sourced content, even though it is likely accurate. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 20:57, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

References[edit]

  • I'm going through and converting book references to shortened footnotes with proper formatting; it makes the prose easier to edit as the reference tags take up less space, plus it allows easier navigating and forces me to check the sources exist and validate the claims given. One other source (Marsh 1997) was missing page numbers; these will need to be added. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 17:56, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Summary[edit]

  • I'm all done with the first pass of the article, having looked at everything in depth. I don't see any insurmountable problems that can't be fixed within a week, so I'll put the review on hold now. Main issues I see is that some of the citations are incomplete and need checking, the issue with close paraphrasing / quotes as described above, and the final bulleted list needs serious attention. Once all that's done, I'll have another read through and see what other work is required - at that point we should be close to meeting the GA criteria I think. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 18:18, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Just having another read through, one outstanding thing I missed : "This requirement had emerged in some (mostly former confederate) states after the right to vote was first given to all races by the 1870 ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. These laws along with the literacy tests and local government acts of coercion, were used against blacks and Native Americans" The source given doesn't seem to support all of this, it's more just a general description of the literacy test.

Other than that, I've tidied up the prose a bit more and pending the above source check, we should be good to go. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 21:21, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, since the only thing stopping this from GA now is some sourcing issues, we could always just ping Megalibrarygirl and get her to have a quick shufti. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 22:04, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Ritchie333: do you just need the sources cleaned up/verified/both? :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 23:08, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Megalibrarygirl: Just a source that verifies the text in green above - AFAIK all the sources pass muster since I've checked them. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 23:09, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
OK! Cool. I'll see what I can find, Ritchie333 Megalibrarygirl (talk) 23:10, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ritchie333 I added a Civil rights report for Mississippi from 1965 and a NYT article about the poll taxes. Interestingly, I just wrote Evelyn Thomas Butts who was one of the activists to helped abolish poll taxes. She was from Virginia. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 23:26, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Good stuff, so on that note I think this meets the GA criteria and I'm happy to pass the review. A good result for Black History Month, I think. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 23:31, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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