Talk:Interstate construction during the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery, Alabama

Some sources and thoughts

That highway/interstate construction is politically driven is evidenced in many studies and books--a JSTOR search for "racial highway planning" (sort of random keywords I tried) proves that clear enough. So, some areas were given access and people could get to work, others were not. In the absence of public transportation, you have stories like this. Studies show that building highways to connect cities to rural areas increases white flight (and turns those areas more Republican, incidentally), etc., and "urban renewal" frequently relocates or tears up black communities--and thus also contributed to de facto segregation. The latter is also what you are dealing with. There are some examples in here, and while this isn't a great source to use, it has very illustrative pictures of Detroit and Washington DC, which are very much like the ones from Montgomery. This, and you know the facts in that quote already, led me to learn about Richard Rothstein, author of this book and, no doubt, a bunch of other books and articles. This is insightful. So maybe you can go look at his books and articles and see if he's discussed Montgomery in some detail somewhere.

What you can do with what you find is write up a "background" section, and we know this already: that such projects were frequently executed for political (racist, economic, etc.) reasons, with specific ideas in mind of what the rulers wanted to see in which areas. The problem here is to stay away from WP:SYNTH: in short, you can't just write "blah blah New Deal Policy and Montgomery is an example of that". You can do that in an academic paper, but not in a Wikipedia article: on Wikipedia, the link between "blah blah" and Montgomery has to be more or less explicitly in the same source. SYNTH essentially means you cannot combine sources to build an argument. Sometimes that's a fine line, but to stay on the clear line of it, a good rule of thumb is that you need to start with information that already links the two. That's a bit harder to find, but also more rewarding.

Again, this is just a fascinating topic. And the editor I mentioned in class is User:Rschen7754: few people know more about writing up interstate/road articles than he does (his most recent Featured Article is California State Route 76, I think). I don't know if he does much in the way of urban planning and racial politics, but he might be interested, and it is entirely possible he has a suggestion or two related to layout, templates, etc. Rschen, anything you have to offer will be greatly appreciated, and it might be a fun break from the Fram matter: Cjefferys is a student in this summer's Wikipedia class: thanks. And Cjefferys, good luck! Dr Aaij (talk) 21:56, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

• Oh, this one is about a similar topic in Birmingham. Journal of Planning Education and Research is a peer-reviewed academic journal; unfortunately our JSTOR doesn't provide access to it, but you can get it through Interlibrary Loan; I searched in their journals for Montgomery Alabama but found nothing (yet). Ha, you could email the author ! Dr Aaij (talk) 22:01, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I haven't been as active in article writing lately, but I'll give it a shot. Going through this a bit: what is the scope of the article and where will the text wind up? If it really is going to be at Construction of I-65 and I-85 Through Montgomery, AL, that is generally too narrow for its own article, at least while Interstate 65 in Alabama and Interstate 85 in Alabama exist. But any properly cited information would be welcome at both articles, as they have nothing at all about the construction of either road. As far as examples, Interstate 8 and California State Route 125 lean more political but don't have much to do with race (but then, this is the West Coast outside of Los Angeles - I'm sure that in the South there's probably more of a history of that). Local newspaper archives are where I get most of my sources, but occasionally I can scrounge up a book or two. --Rschen7754 06:15, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
    • I for some reason wasn't getting the notifications that the talk page was getting used. So I'm sorry for the super delayed response. I had been spending most of my time gathering what information I could and today was going to go pour a lot of it into the page itself, but had been having little to no luck finding "balancing" resources or topics that didn't already cover what I had already found. I was doing some thinking and Rschen I completely agree, so after checking (with what ways I can think) to make sure there isn't another article forming to this. I'm going to widen the topic to Interstate construction during the Civil Rights movement. I know it might be bold and probably will be very unbalanced, but I do believe it will lead to a more "full" article with being able to widen my search parameter and being able to go into more detail with information that I'm finding from a bunch of the sources, and maybe just split the cities up covering the major cities that are frequently mentioned like Atlanta, Miami, Detroit, etc... Does this sound good to you as well, Dr Aaij (talk)? Cjefferys (talk) 00:45, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
      • Cjefferys, have you been to the Five Points Deli in Cloverdale? They serve a good hamburger--I went in there the other day, and accidentally ordered a burger that came wrapped in TWO cheese quesadillas--in other words, four tortillas. It was more than I could eat. That, I believe, may be a useful analogy here. It is a viable topic (but you kinda have to stick "US" in there) but it's huge, or yuge, as some might say. And while I hate to disagree with User:Rschen7754, I do think the "original" subject was fine and encyclopedic. It's somewhat out of the ordinary, but if the sources are there to prove it's notable, it's notable.

        On the other hand, broadening the topic is a great opportunity to allow you to have, let's say, four or five relatively short sections on, for instance, Detroit, Washington, and a few other cities that were mentioned in that book you found. So tactically it's not a bad move--as long as it's clear that you are providing examples, not comprehensive coverage. In other words, it will be a more incomplete article for much longer. The other thing I'm considering is, hey, it's just a relatively small class exercise, and you got other things to do... It will be a Good Thing for Humanity if you write it, but let's not forget you got a job and a few more papers to write. Either way, good luck, and I am proud of you. Dr Aaij (talk) 14:36, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

        • So you renamed it, but the content doesn't yet reflect it. Do not be afraid to name it back, so to speak, and finish what you have, as best you can. Dr Aaij (talk) 16:41, 26 July 2019 (UTC)