Talk:Frank Lawrence Owsley

Untitled
I deleted references to neo-abolitionist historians in the section on Owsley's 1940 book. The Wikipedia article on "neo-abolitionists" makes the point it was a term for later civil rights activists of the 1950's and 1960's, as well as historians who wrote during the 1960's and in the later decades of the 20th c., especially those who seemed to be influenced by the sense of moral crusade about ensuring civil rights to African American citizens.--Parkwells 15:55, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

This article seems circular in reasoning - using Wood (2003) both to point to critics who accused Owsley of being a racist (but Owsley was quoted earlier in the article as saying the South was "white man's country" and African Americans had to accommodate to that, so what is the question about racism?) and Wood for other comments about Owsley's work.--Parkwells 16:14, 30 October 2007 (UTC)--Parkwells 16:16, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
 * My problem with that quote is that, if it is real, it is completely out of context. I also doubt the statement is accurate because it contains the phrase "African Americans", a phrase that would not have been used much (if at all) in 1933. It is overly paraphrased to the point that the context is lost. I'd like to fix it but I simply don't have time to track down the source, and I also have a conflict of interest that should prevent me from editing the article at all. nut-meg 01:47, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup
This article may need cleanup for clunky writing and tone. I do not feel it is appropriate for me to do this as I have a conflict of interest (WP:COI). I will try to fix some of the little things, but the page may ultimately need a rewrite. One problem is sentences like this: ''Owsley asserted that the real South was liberal, American, and Jeffersonian, not radical or reactionary. Thomas Jefferson was of course a slave owner.'' I fixed what was a huge run on sentence there. But what Owsley means by "Jeffersonian" is Jeffersonian democracy, not that everyone in the south modeled themselves after Jefferson personally. I believe that dichotomy was one of the things that interested the Owsleys. nut-meg 04:33, 2 November 2007 (UTC)