Talk:Statue of Jefferson Davis (U.S. Capitol)/GA1

GA Review
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.''

Reviewer: Ado2102 (talk · contribs) 23:40, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Review begun. Ado2102 (talk) 23:40, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

This is a really solid article. Does a very good job especially on the neutrality criterion, and passes the well written, verifiable, stable, and illustrated criteria in my view. I have a few comments below for the attention of the requestor, and I'd like to request responses/reactions before I pass it on the 3a criterion (covers all aspects).

Lead
I attempted a revision of the lead to clarify that the statue was commissioned by Mississippi in 1931 for the purpose of inclusion in the National Statuary Hall collection. Please feel free to correct or revert.

Background and unveiling ceremony section
Can you provide some additional narrative or explanation for why Mississippi did not commission a statue until 1931, i.e., account for the period between 1864 and 1930?

Can you provide a citation that the statue was commissioned by Mississippi? I.e., that it was not a gift or commissioned by somebody else or something?

Can you provide the date of the commission or any other details? Right now the article gives the impression that the commission happened immediately after 1864.

Can you provide any further information on the statue's design or creation? It would be interesting.

Public reaction to the statue's unveiling section
Nitpicks: it's technically initial reaction, both before and after unveiling. Typically it's referred to as the "New York Daily News" right?

Later History section
In general, I'm thinking about the larger argument going on in society about how "historical" confederate statues are, given that they date not from the civil war era or immediately after, but from relatively later era, in this case, the 1930s. While the article is and needs to remain neutral, I feel that in a couple choices there is some (unintentional) obfuscation of the timeline. This is one: saying "later history" is kind of vague. The topic discusses events from the 1940s to 1990s, and the next section is titled "2010s and 2020s controversy", so what about retitling this to "1940s to 1990s" or something similar?

Is there any indication that memorial associations stopped placing wreaths on the statute in the 1990s? That seems implied and I'm just curious if that's the case.

controversy section
"According to federal law." Consider adding cite to this document - https://www.aoc.gov/sites/default/files/statue_replacement_guidelines_2014.pdf - and/or direct citation to.

This is a general question, but it says "repeated calls". Were there any calls prior to 2015?

August 2017 controversy: I think the public statements of the Mississippi federal delegation (the Senators and Reps from the state) need to be included in the summary of the proposal to remove the statues, as well as a discussion of any significant response in the state of Mississippi (governor, state government, major newspapers?). I know this is covered right above in the March 2017 discussion, but this was a big new event; did anything change, were there other statements? Presumably, nothing came of the August 2017 calls? Right now, it just jumps from arguments that the statue should be removed, to a proposed bill from non-MS Congressional members to change federal law to remove it directly, but that jumps over an important part of the story - which of course has to be handled neutrally as well.

Status query
Ado2102, it appears that the most recent edit that nominator Jmooers41 made is the one on May 27 when they nominated the article at GAN. I think we have to assume that they won't be returning to work on their nomination. Some of the issues seem serious enough that the article cannot pass without them being addressed. You might want to see if you can find someone to take over for them: the article's original creator, Another Believer, might be willing, or they might be able to suggest someone else, or you might be able to find someone from one of the relevant WikiProjects. Best of luck, and thank you for being willing to review this nomination. BlueMoonset (talk) 00:05, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know much at all about the subject so I'm not comfortable rolling up my sleeves at this time. I'd welcome a Talk page note at WikiProject Sculpture to see if any other editors are interested, but if not after a week or so, this may just need to be closed. --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 00:15, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Status Update
Jmooers41 (talk) 13:52, 6 September 2021 (UTC)My apologies, I have been meaning to address the nomination but life has kept getting in the way. Thank you for reviewing this Wikipedia page, I will try to respond to as much as of your feedback today that I can. Again my apologies for the late response.

GA Review Response
Thank you Ado2102, Another Believer, and BlueMoonset for reviewing this article. Most of research on this article was done in February and March 2021 for a class project. For a disclaimer, it took me many, many hours to track down these sources and wade through the public's engagement with this controversial subject. I have used my notes from this spring to help me address the issues raised in the GA Review. Here is my response to the matters addressed in the GA review

Lead: I was not able to confirm what year the statue was commissioned. I have a feeling it would have been commissioned either in 1928 or 1929 but could not find any sources to confirm that. However there are multiple news articles covering the statue's placement in Statuary Hall in late 1930. So the Statue of Jefferson Davis resided in the US Capitol for roughly 6 months before the official unveiling ceremony. I didn't include this detail in my editing of this article as I was struggling to concisely explain this. But I disagree with the new edit saying that the statue was commissioned in 1931. 1931 is just when it was officially unveiled and the public record shows that the statue existed in 1930. Can provide references to those articles if necessary.

Background and unveiling ceremony section:

Can you provide some additional narrative or explanation for why Mississippi did not commission a statue until 1931, i.e., account for the period between 1864 and 1930?

I would be hard pressed to provide an explanation on this that wasn't my own opinion. The quote from Senator Harrison's speech at the Unveiling Ceremony and the small media coverage of Senator Harrison's speech were some of the only times it was addressed. There is some mentioning in an editorial that Virginia's Statue of Robert E. Lee in Statuary Hall provided motivation but it was just an opinion and seemed superfluous to the other mention of the Lee Statue. If you want my conjecture and arguments for why I believe Mississippi did not commission a statue for close to 65 years, I can provide them.

''Can you provide a citation that the statue was commissioned by Mississippi? I.e., that it was not a gift or commissioned by somebody else or something?''

I can't. I looked long and hard for anything on the commissioning of these statues and for that exact information and couldn't find it. I wish that information was there as well.

''Can you provide the date of the commission or any other details? Right now the article gives the impression that the commission happened immediately after 1864.''

As mentioned earlier, I couldn't find an official announcement of the commissioning or discussions surrounding the commissioning of the statue. Because I couldn't track down an official date, I felt like I had to keep it vague. You're right in saying that it currently reads as if the statues were commissioned. We can try and find an alternative method of addressing this but without an exact date of of their commissioning it could be challenging.

''Can you provide any further information on the statue's design or creation? It would be interesting.''

I wish that I could but it wasn't addressed in any of my research. Augustus Lukeman's papers are in the National Archives in Washington, DC. That would be my best bet to find further information of the statue's design and creation but I wasn't able to access those due to the Covid-19 Pandemic.

I will try and respond to the rest of the feedback later today!Jmooers41 (talk) 15:17, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Final notice
As it has been over six weeks since the above post, and the nominator has not followed up (nor edited on Wikipedia at all) and the reviewer has not been active, I have just pinged the nominator on their talk page and given them seven days to make significant progress. If that does not occur, the review will be closed. BlueMoonset (talk) 18:02, 22 October 2021 (UTC)


 * @BlueMoonset I posted notes at WikiProjects Public Art, Sculpture, and Visual arts, asking if anyone wants to pick up this nomination. --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 20:48, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Another Believer, thanks. I'll give this through the end of October, then, an extra couple of days and taking this through this weekend. If there's no action by then, I'll close it on November 1. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:04, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Per the above, the GA nomination has been closed as unsuccessful. If someone wishes to take the article on, improve it so it meets the GA criteria, and then renominate it and shepherd it through the review process, they would be welcome. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:15, 2 November 2021 (UTC)