Template:Did you know nominations/Hawkins v. Town of Shaw


 * The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as |this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:29, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Hawkins v. Town of Shaw

 * ... that four members of the Hawkins family died violent deaths after winning their lawsuit against Shaw, Mississippi? Source: Congressional Record, 16 February 2005
 * ALT1:... that according to Hawkins v. Town of Shaw a town may not discriminate racially in its distribution of infrastructure?
 * ALT2:... that Shaw, Mississippi got into legal trouble after failing to provide sewers and streetlights in black neighborhoods?
 * Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Owusu Afriyie Akoto (in process)
 * Comment: Difficulties in writing this article included the question of how to separate facts from decisions (you'll see why when you read it), and the question of which points of many (in the decisions and subsequent law reviews) to emphasize. Advice on these matters is very welcome.

Created by Groupuscule (talk). Self-nominated at 05:51, 7 July 2017 (UTC).


 * New, long enough, neutral, fairly well sourced. QPQ done. A few minor issues:
 * Need to cite the four block quotations
 * What's going on here?: ". . . was Jack Greenberg of the, part of the team . . ."
 * Can you find anymore information about the deaths of Mary Lou Hawkins and her son and two grandchildren? Were the shooting and arsons related to the case? What happened to the police officer (just looked it up, here's the answer)? Were the arsonists caught? I also clipped the newspapers.com article about the shooting you cited so that it is more readable, which perhaps will help. Feel free to let me know if you find other articles that you would like clipped (see WP:Newspapers.com/Approved).
 * Maybe rename the "Facts" section "Background"
 * Awkward transition, consider revising: "Regarding judicial intervention into a typically legislative affair, . . ."
 * Should "(en banc)" follow the citation in the second infobox?
 * Fix the first two issues and you'll be good to go, though I suggest also working on the third in particular; it's an interesting human side of the case, and extremely relevant to the (preferred) first hook. --Usernameunique (talk) 06:44, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Hello and thank you very much for reviewing the article and providing the newspaper clippings—a significant improvement for readers using the references. My apologies for the delay in responding. I made some edits to address the issues you raised above. Unfortunately more information on the Hawkins family has not been forthcoming. The existing sources suggest a connection between the family's activism and the violence which befell it, but I don't believe a legal connection was ever made. (Thus it seemed the information was worth including, but stated as plainly as possible.) I can also find no information about how or whether Shaw responded to this ruling in the following years. I even went so far as to consult two university librarians on this issue—to no avail. Certainly this will leave readers curious but I'm not sure there's any helping it. But do let me know if you have some ideas for where to look. Best, groupuscule (talk) 19:14, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Symbol confirmed.svg Looks good! Thanks for fixing the issues. I'm really not sure about where to find additional information, and especially within the context of rural southern civil rights era racism, it may be overly optimistic to expect meticulous records to have been kept about the arsons, shooting, or response to the Court's ruling. For all we know there are no more newspaper articles on the subject. Court records would perhaps shed some light on the police shooting, if they still exist, although tracking them down could be both time consuming and expensive. House Resolution 103 suggests that information is somewhere, although realistically that could just be an oral history rather than anything "official." In that case the best bet might be to try to track down a relative (but again, time consuming etc.). Death certificates might be public records, too. --Usernameunique (talk) 05:34, 12 August 2017 (UTC)