Talk:Jim Thorpe

Victim of racism
I'm not in love with this section or title. I would probably integrate the material to the appropriate sections. Regardless, I remember seeing that Thorpe had to bunk with a Jewish Oylmpian, supposedly in "steerage", on the way to Sweden. If a good souce can be found it would be interesting to include. His role as coach, speaker, celebrity, actor, and NFL promoter seems to be getting downplayed in our entry which strikes me as continuation of the discrimination he faced. Certainly wasn't a dumb jock. Sad. FloridaArmy (talk) 16:33, 14 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I don't know if this'd be a good source, but it's a start. It contains info about the Jewish oilman and other things that aren't mentioned in the article. Graham 87 16:47, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The article says "Wheeler interviewed Abel Kiviat, Thorpe’s roommate on the ship to reach Sweden. Kiviat was Jewish and revealed that he and Thorpe weren’t given keys to rooms, like the rest of the competitors. They were expected to sleep in steerage below. Wheeler also found a picture of Thorpe training on the ship and heard the stories of how he led workouts. The interviews corrected the oft-repeated “no training” stories and the lie that Thorpe would drink and then compete." Saying Fellow Olympian Abel Kiviat, a Jew, said they had to stay separate from the team in "steerage" or something similar works for me. I take anecdotes from decades prior with a grain of salt but there must have been a sense of alienation and some truth to theirbhaving to bunk apart. FloridaArmy (talk) 17:18, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Angie
At some point noting Angelina Jolie's movie project also seems worthwile. Noted here. FloridaArmy (talk) 17:16, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Shoes?
Currently, the article on sneakers mentions Thorpe in the same breath as Chuck Taylor as the Michael Jordans of their era. Upon cursory CTRL+Fing, there seems to be absolutely nothing in this article on shoes, footwear, sponsorships, &c. Should this be removed from over there? or is something important still missing here? or is it already here and just phrased a little too obliquely?

Amid all the racism,
 * ...The U.S. market for sneakers grew steadily as young boys lined up to buy sneakers endorsed by football player Jim Thorpe...

is a lovely image. Be unfortunate if it were entirely made up. — Llywelyn II   12:21, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately I suspect it was either made up or perhaps a different person was intended. I don't know much about the subject of this article beyond what's on his page and I wouldn't be surprised if some major things are missing from here. It's very difficult to text-search for Jim Thorpe-endorsed footware because of the stolen shoes incident but I couldn't find any evidence for it on a quick check. The offending text was added to the sneaker article in this edit in 2015, which was derived from this June 2009 edit to Athletic shoe, which in turn came from this February 2009 edit to the page now at "Sneaker collecting". The entire contribution history of the user who added that text is summed up in this series of edits. The closest thing to a smoking gun I can find is that in a Google Books search of the most recent biography of Thorpe in the further reading section, there are no results whatsoever for "sneakers" and all the results for "shoes" are irrelevant. I'm confident enough that it's mistaken that I'll remove Thorpe from the sneakers page myself. Graham 87 16:36, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I've removed mention of him from the Wikipedia articles about sneakers in Spanish and Finnish and asked for help in the Vietnamese Wikipedia about removing his name from there. I know basic Spanish grammar through Italian and the Finnish translation simplified the text enough so that I could do the removal myself, but neither of those things are true for the Vietnamese page. Graham 87 17:49, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Football Teams
List of teams Thorpe played and coached for is missing the Portsmouth Shoesteels, with which he was a player-coach. Is this for any particular reason? Trevbk (talk) 19:28, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Writing for a Digital World
— Assignment last updated by Sallino2 (talk) 20:10, 30 January 2024 (UTC)