Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Martha Priscilla Shaw


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. I considered closing as "no consensus" but after some reflection I do think that a rough, though not strong consensus exists to keep this. Ad Orientem (talk) 03:33, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Martha Priscilla Shaw

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Not a fun one to bring if her claim to fame is correct, but even then she's (arguably? Is WP:V met?) only the second female mayor in S.C.: the article's been tagged as an orphan for eight years, the link to the one reference doesn't work anymore (archived at, the other reference is "find a grave", and a WP:BEFORE search is scarce. Fails WP:NPOL and WP:GNG. SportingFlyer  talk  04:01, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment: Considering the age, what reliable sources may exist on her are very likely either not digitized at all or not indexed by Google and the likes. With some difficulty, I found an article in the Florence Morning News of May 30, 1956 on p.2, headline "SHAW AFB DEDICATES NAMESAKE MEMORIAL", which at least verifies she was mayor of Sumter albeit not whether she was second in all SC (the article itself is more about her brother Lt. Ervin David Shaw with some trivial mentions of Martha) here, a single-line mention in the San Rafael Daily Independent Journal of May 4, 1954, on p.15 in an article with headline "Mary Margaret McBride Project Winners Include 4 Californians", which again verifies she was mayor of Sumter and also states her to be one of four national winners of the 1954 Mary Margaret McBride Project, "for political crusading". (Of the four mentioned Californian winners, one was also a national winner, the others received special citations) here. While neither of those are significant coverage in the least, their existence proves her existence and being mayor of Sumter at some point and suggests other sources may very well exist offline. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 04:47, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment thanks for your research - it's clear to me she passed WP:V for being the mayor, but her claim of being the second in S.C. hasn't been made clear by the available sources. Apologies if that was unclear. SportingFlyer  talk  18:12, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. North America1000 06:48, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. North America1000 06:48, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of South Carolina-related deletion discussions. North America1000 06:49, 12 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete, without prejudice against recreation in the future if somebody can source her better. Given that she was mayor in the 1950s, it's very definitely true that one would need to dig into news archiving tools, such as a ProQuest database or microfilms, to really establish whether she has enough sourcing to clear GNG or not — but (a) Sumter SC is not large enough to hand her an automatic presumption of notability under NPOL just for existing as a mayor, (b) it isn't even large enough that the purely local media coverage that's routinely expected to always exist for mayors would be enough in and of itself to get her over GNG, (c) being the second female mayor in her entire state (or even being the first female mayor of her own city) is not an automatic inclusion freebie that exempts her from still having to clear GNG on the sourcing, and (d) if a person doesn't pass the relevant SNG for her occupation, then a GNG-satisfying volume of sourcing has to be shown to exist, not just presumed to maybe exist, before she earns the "keep and flag for referencing improvement" treatment. So to get her kept, what would have to be shown is that sourcing does exist, which expands in depth and/or volume and/or geographic range beyond the bare minimum of what every mayor of everywhere could always show. If somebody's willing to put in enough work to do that, then this can be recreated — but in the meantime, to be kept in this form its improvability would have to be demonstrated, and not just theorized as "anything's possible". Bearcat (talk) 19:23, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 14:16, 13 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep - She seems to have gone by "Priscilla Shaw" and more can be found on her under that name at, for instance, newspapers.com. I'll try to update her page in the coming days if no one else has. In the meantime, she has an entry view-able in snippet mode on google books in Sass, H. R. The Story of the South Carolina Lowcountry, Volume 3, J. F. Hyer, 1956 p678, and was awarded the Mary Margaret McBride Award in 1954. It doesn't seem obvious that that award satisfies ANYBIO, but it does imply that her community service work was nationally recognized. Smmurphy(Talk) 16:29, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Tentative Keep per sources found by Smmurphy. I agree that I'm not totally sure of the scope of the award, since it isn't really named as a legacy in the article of McBride herself, but I think her inclusion in the Hyer book means she will likely be found to meet the GNG with newspaper coverage from the era. matt91486 (talk) 03:50, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I did a search for the award. It's difficult to find any substantive information on it at all, and a newspapers.com search isn't helpful: I don't think it satisfies ANYBIO. In terms of whether she passes WP:GNG, I still haven't been able to find any sources that would convince me to withdraw the nomination, especially considering the article was created by a user who created only four Sumter mayor articles (two of which I'd have my eye on for AfD), was orphaned for over a decade, and still contains only one source. In the very least I'd like to find a reference showing whether she was the first or second female mayor. If she were the first, I'd likely withdraw the nomination. This newspaper reference says she's the first, but is only trivial:   SportingFlyer  talk  04:38, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The Award was given by the "Mary Margaret McBride Project", and using that as a search term, I find information about nominees, awardees, and the selection process, here. The Award was only given for a few years in the mid 1950s, but the award committee is relatively august; in 1952 it included the United Church Women, the National Council of Catholic Women, the National Council of Jewish Women, and numerous individuals such as Fannie Hurst. Smmurphy(Talk) 15:28, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
 * These two clippings call her the first female mayor in SC, the first of which is the clipping from one of the pages I linked earlier - and . Also, I updated the article a bit. The statement that she was the second female mayor in SC in the lede seems to have been vandalism from 2017 by an IP - it originally said first and given two independent sources for her as first, I'm tempted to believe it to be verifiable. Smmurphy(Talk) 21:24, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   09:23, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete Find a grave is not at all, in any way, a reliable source. One source is not enough to pass GNG. Beyond this, extraordinary claims, like being the second female mayor in a state, need actual reliable sourcing. I do not trust the history museum of the place she was mayor to provide this. So the claims that this article is built on are just not verified.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:36, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep - Even in the era of the #MeToo movement and moves toward gender equity in politics and other fields, it's easy to forget how much of an accomplishment it was for Shaw and other women to become mayor of a US city in the mid-20th Century anywhere in the country, especially in the Deep South. The political and institutional barriers facing potential female mayors like Shaw were high and achieving the office during the 1950s is an accomplishment. Scanlan (talk) 14:15, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Sure, but even in the 1950s a woman mayor still has to have enough reliable source coverage to clear WP:GNG. As valuable as the project to get more women into Wikipedia is, we still don't and can't suspend our notability criteria just because the subject happens to be a woman — content about a woman still has to be verifiable and accurate, so the fact of her gender cannot automatically exempt a woman from having to be properly sourced as notable and not just asserted as notable. Bearcat (talk) 16:29, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Yunshui 雲 水 13:54, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * added newspaper coverage of a civil rights initiative she took in 1955 as Mayor.E.M.Gregory (talk) 22:36, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment - added archived link to the Sumter County Museum's "Martha Priscilla Shaw Collection" (previously a dead link). Scanlan (talk) 01:28, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep Seems to meet GNG if not NPOL. ~ EDDY  ( talk / contribs ) ~ 22:13, 4 July 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.