Talk:Fielding L. Wright

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Oddly presented material on a hardline segregationist
Followed a chain of tangential research into Dixiecrats this afternoon, and thus to Wright. I was struck that the article is a GA yet makes little mention of his hardline segregationist stance and record of overtly racist positions and statements. Instead we have oblique mentions regarding e.g. "the region's racial beliefs". Especially in today's climate (but even beforehand, with regard to WP:WEIGHT), this is surprising.

Here's a fun quote addressing African Americans that comes up in a few sources:

"If any of you have become so decided as to want to enter our white schools, patronize our hotels and cafes, enjoy social equality with the whites, then true kindness and sympathy requires me to advise you to make your homes in some other state" .

&mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 22:11, 28 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks for letting me know. I'll make sure that the page has some edits to ensure that his segregationist and anti civil-rights stances are more clearly represented. Best, SerAntoniDeMiloni (talk) 22:52, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

See: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/31279248/ms-racist-governor-fielding-wright-mar/
 * The Oxford A-Level History book seems to list him as an 'Extreme racist'... It might be worth adding some of these views into the 'Legacy' section?
 * Thank you for bringing this up. Could you find more sources from his career and I will add them into the article? - Jon698 talk 23:35 28 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Yeah. The laptop I was using earlier decided to reset so I don't have the tabs open, but will try to bring them back up and post here in the next few days. &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 23:42, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Modern scholarship
[dubious – discuss] 02:34, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't apologise for criticizing a GA; if this went to GAR it would probably fail WP:GA? on criteria 3 (broad in coverage) and 4 (neutrality). I can't many (literally, almost none) sources that aren't contemporary, and they do not provide either depth of breadth of coverage.There's plenty of modern scholarship; why has this not been used to a greater or lesser degree? E.g.
 * 1) Martin, G. A., Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote (Miss. Univ. Press, 2010)
 * 2) Goldfield, D., Black, White, and Southern: Race Relations and Southern Culture (Luis's S. Univ Press, 1990)
 * 3) Busbee, W. F., Mississippi: A History (Wiley, 2015)
 * 4) Sobel, R., Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States, 1789-1978 (Greenwood, 1988)
 * 5) Feldman, G., The Great Melding: War, the Dixiecrat Rebellion, and the Southern Model (Univ Alabama Press, 2015)
 * 6) Frederickson, K., The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 (Univ NC Press, 2001).And that took <10".  ——  Serial # 12:44, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * 7) Frederickson, K.  (2000, February). Wright, Fielding Lewis (1895-1956), governor of Mississippi and vice presidential candidate. American National Biography
 * any thoughts on the criteria? ——  Serial # 12:54, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Umm? Did you even try looking at you own listed sources online? None of them are available for free online or are either extremely limited so I can't look at them myself for sourcing. - Jon698 talk 13:03 1 July 2020
 * I'm afraid your ability or otherwise to access a source is irrelevant to WP:N, which is not only policy but a founding pillar of the project. And you may note the lack of a caveat at WP:WIAGA allowing for the criteria to be abandoned dependant on one's ability to adhere it it. ——  Serial # 13:08, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * ? If I can't read a source you provide then how am I suppose to use it as a source if I don't even know what the information inside is? - Jon698 talk 13:09 1 July 2020

Just curious but how did half my signature end up at the top of this thread? Did I do that? :-D Levivich&thinsp;[dubious – discuss] 20:38, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Nope, that was SN :) P-K3 (talk) 20:49, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Balance
re my opening comment about an "unbalanced presentation": If we think of the article as a pie, one approach might be to say, well, this person lived ~60 years, so 1/3 of the pie should cover his first 20 years (1895-1915), 1/3 of the pie should cover ages 20-40 (1915-1935), and 1/3 of the pie should cover from age 40 to death (1935-1956). This apportionment might be called "balanced", but actually, it's just equal, not balanced.

Wikipedia is a tertiary source that summarizes secondary sources. If we look at all of the secondary sources (not primary sources like contemporaneous news coverage, but secondary sources like scholarship written by historians), almost all (90%?) of the secondary sources writing about Wright focus, often exclusively, on his years as governor, 1946-1952. Within that ~90%, it seems to me at least half of it focuses on what happened in 1948 with the Dixiecrats, and the other half focuses on the rest of his governorship. To me, a balanced article would reflect that. It would be something like 1/2 of the article spent on Dixiecrats, 1/4 on his governorship before and after 1948, and the remaining 1/4 on the rest of his life, 1895-1946 and 1952-56. Roughly, that's what I would think of as WP:DUE coverage.

Compare, for example, the Mississippi Encyclopedia article on Wright: The word "Dixiecrat" and Wright's opposition to Truman's 1948 "strong civil rights platform" is in the first sentence. In fact, these two items are given before they even give Wright's name. I think our lead should follow and say something like "anti-civil rights" and/or "pro-segregation" in the first paragraph, if not the first sentence.

As another example, look at our coverage of his 1947 election to governor. Our article says, "On June 12, he formally launched his campaign at a campaign rally in Rolling Fork where he showed his twenty-point platform which included support for veteran benefits, road improvements, sales tax exemptions, and stopping outside influence on Mississippi." That's cited to this 1947 article in the Hattiesburg American, which prints Wright's platform. Nowhere in the platform does it say anything about race or segregation. But that's because it's all in code (see dog whistle politics). Wright's platform #14 is "Conduct the Democratic primaries 'in such a manner as to preserve the heritage and traditions of the Southern Democrats so adequately protected by our forefathers'". That means continue to disenfranchise blacks, as Mississippi had been doing since the Civil War. #18: "Encourage higher moral teachings". #20: "Continue to battle 'outside meddlers' seeking to 'place our state in a false light and hold us up to scorn.'" The Hattiesburg American just prints this without comment. This book discusses the problems with MS newspapers' coverage of local civil rights issues.

Meanwhile, Mississippi Encyclopedia writes: "Because of his strong stand against civil rights, his support for states’ rights, and with the advantage of incumbency, Governor Wright accomplished a feat rarely seen in Mississippi politics: in 1947 he was elected governor in the first primary, over four opponents, in his first try for the state’s highest office." Nothing about his platform for road improvements or sales tax exemptions. That's what our article should say. We need to tell our reader that "stopping outside influence on Mississippi" means opposing racial integration. That's the difference between citing to a primary source and a secondary source.

So I think it's a feature, not a bug, that the secondary sources focus on his anti-civil rights record and not on the other parts of his life, and I think it's good if our article ends up doing the same in terms of how it "carves up the pie". Levivich&thinsp;[dubious – discuss] 20:38, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry about this, but can you clarify this. Are you talking about removing stuff from the article or increasing the amount of information for his gubernatorial tenure? (Edit: BTW can you give me your opinion on the recent changes to the article's body and lead?) - Jon698 talk 01:18, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Good question; I'd say both, really it's three: add, replace, remove.
 * Add material that's covered in the secondary sources but not yet covered in our article (e.g., segregationist platform of his 1947 gubernatorial campaign)
 * Replace citations to primary sources with citations to secondary sources (for material in secondary sources that's already in our article)
 * Remove anything trivial that may be covered in primary sources but is not covered in secondary sources. If it's not in the secondary sources, it's probably trivial. Occasionally, there might be good reason to cite something only to a primary source, often that means with attribution rather than in wikivoice. It's generally true that if a statement in wikivoice is cited only to a primary source, it's probably WP:OR. But as an example, you might keep a primary source citation if there is something uniquely useful to the reader about that primary source. For example, I'd keep the citation to the primary source that prints Wright's actual 1947 platform, because the reader will get value out of reading the original if they choose to do so.
 * Here's another example. Normally I would just make this edit, but I thought in this case it might be more helpful to explain it here. Our article currently reads:
 * The above passage in our article could be reduced to something like:
 * Same sources, almost the same level of detail, half the length. It could be reduced further still. Also, the primary sources above should still be replaced by secondary sources whenever possible. For example, I'm not sure if it's OK to say that they ran unopposed and source that to a sample ballot published in the newspaper prior to the election. There is probably a secondary source out there that we can use to source that the Democratric candidates in the 1943 Miss. gubernatorial election were unopposed. In any event, this kind of condensing will allow you to expand other areas without increasing the overall length of the article. HTH, Levivich&thinsp;[dubious – discuss] 04:19, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Same sources, almost the same level of detail, half the length. It could be reduced further still. Also, the primary sources above should still be replaced by secondary sources whenever possible. For example, I'm not sure if it's OK to say that they ran unopposed and source that to a sample ballot published in the newspaper prior to the election. There is probably a secondary source out there that we can use to source that the Democratric candidates in the 1943 Miss. gubernatorial election were unopposed. In any event, this kind of condensing will allow you to expand other areas without increasing the overall length of the article. HTH, Levivich&thinsp;[dubious – discuss] 04:19, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Same sources, almost the same level of detail, half the length. It could be reduced further still. Also, the primary sources above should still be replaced by secondary sources whenever possible. For example, I'm not sure if it's OK to say that they ran unopposed and source that to a sample ballot published in the newspaper prior to the election. There is probably a secondary source out there that we can use to source that the Democratric candidates in the 1943 Miss. gubernatorial election were unopposed. In any event, this kind of condensing will allow you to expand other areas without increasing the overall length of the article. HTH, Levivich&thinsp;[dubious – discuss] 04:19, 2 July 2020 (UTC)