Template:Did you know nominations/Edisto Island during the Civil War

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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 Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:19, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Edisto Island during the Civil War[edit]

Created/expanded by Smmurphy (talk). Self-nominated at 16:26, 17 April 2017 (UTC).

  • A few issues - For the first hook to be considered, there needs to be an inline citation right after the sentence that ends with "colony of over 100 former slaves on Otter Island in December 1861, which would be supervised by Lieutenant James W. A. Nicholson." For the second hook, I see no mention of Virginia in the article, but I do see West Virginia mentioned. I'm also not sure if the word blacks is alright to use in an encyclopedia article. The part of the first sentence in the intro which says "a large colony of African Americans escaped former slaves" doesn't sound correct. SL93 (talk) 13:29, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
  • @SL93: Thank you for the feedback. I've tried to address the points you mention. I've switched the citations in the paragraph containing the sentence that ends with "colony of over 100 former slaves on Otter Island in December 1861, which would be supervised by Lieutenant James W. A. Nicholson." to page by page rather than a single citation at the end of the paragraph. In this way, that sentence is now followed by a citation. For the second hook, I added in the article that McClellan's Peninsula Campaign, which caused troops to move from the coast, was in Virginia. I've changed the word "black" to "African American" in the article. I'm not sure if this is strictly correct as sometimes I wonder if "African American" is a bit anachronistic when applied to southern blacks from that time, particularly before the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, and the Confiscation Act of 1862 (plus, many free individuals from that time period had somewhat unclear citizenship, for example Robert B. Elliott). I am not sure if we have a guideline to deal with the issue, but I don't know the correct answer and am happy to change the language in the article. Finally, "African Americans" should have been singular (actually, it works better as an adjective) in that sentence, and I've changed it to adjective form. Thank you again for taking the time to look through the article and let me know if you have any more suggestions! Smmurphy(Talk) 14:42, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
  • The article is long enough, new enough, and neutral. The hooks are reliably cited and the promoting admin can choose the hook. I assume good faith on the offline references. If there is a consensus that black should be used rather than African American, it can be changed by anyone. SL93 (talk) 15:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)