Talk:List of first African-American U.S. state legislators

The Alaska section contains numerous inaccuracies. Firstly, the use of the term "elected" may be part of the problem. Blanche McSmith was never elected. She was appointed mid-session by Alaska governor William A. Egan to replace John Rader, whom Egan had appointed attorney general. She won nomination but lost election to a full term in 1960. Willard Bowman was actually first elected in 1970 alongside a fellow African-American, Joshua Wright. Bowman's reelection in 1972 saw him become the first African-American to serve more than a single term. 1972 also saw the election of Selwyn Carrol of Fairbanks, the first African-American legislator to hail from outside of Anchorage, Alaska's largest city. Then we have David S. Wilson, which is how I came to find this list. The list states that he was elected in 2017. As I'm sure is the case with most other states, legislators in Alaska are elected in November of even-numbered years while beginning and ending their terms of office in January of odd-numbered years, something which is often confused or misrepresented by "reliable" sources and those who rely upon that sort of media for their information. Therefore, Wilson was elected in 2016 and took office in 2017. I'm intimately familiar with the situation in Alaska only as it pertains to this list. Nonetheless, if I could uncover this many problems with one state alone, it causes me to wonder how much of the rest of the list contains similar problems. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 00:03, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * There was an all-day conference on African-American issues at Clark Middle School yesterday. Some of the published material from the Blacks in Alaska History Project (details here) was made available there.  This included a timeline, which correctly showed that Blanche McSmith was appointed to the legislature and that Willard Bowman and Josh Wright were the first elected African-American members.  So once again I'll ask: what the hell purpose does this list serve if a) it isn't factually accurate and b) the community appears to be treating it as yet another example of some individual editor's vanity project and there's no attempt at collaboration to make it right?  Also once again, should the weight be put on when the person was elected or when they actually took office, or is there an attempt going on to confuse the two? RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions  04:01, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi, I started this list last summer and have been working on it ever since. I've only been going off of the dates which I find for the election as listed on sources like PDFs and webpages. If you feel that this should go with when they took office rather than when they were elected, feel free to jump in and edit the page. I'm just busy with listing names, chambers and whatnot. Thanks. --RayneVanDunem (talk) 06:24, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

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There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:African-American gospel which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 23:18, 18 February 2019 (UTC)