Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/File:First colored senator and reps.jpg

First United States Senator and Representatives of Color (1872)
Voting period ends on 7 Dec 2012 at 09:13:23 (UTC) First Colored Senator and Representatives.jpg and Representatives of colour, from an 1872 lithograph by Currier and Ives. (Left to right) Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi, Representatives Benjamin Turner of Alabama, Robert DeLarge of South Carolina, Josiah Walls of Florida, Jefferson Long of Georgia, Joseph Rainey and Robert B. Elliot of South Carolina.

This was from a short-lived period of relative racial equality after the American Civil War, which, unfortunately, led to such practices as white-only primaries, Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, and other attempts to restrict the rights of Americans of colour to vote. Thought we should have as much material as possible for Black History Month, and this is a little-known but important part of United States history. I'd like to have all of February devoted to the subject. It's not like it's not an extremely varied field in its own right.

Anyway, back to the picture. Ironically, all these men were Republicans. The parties have actually switched sides on quite a lot of issues since the 1800s; it's somewhat weird to see the party that first elected blacks be the one that currently has a scandal where Florida's former Republican governor is saying they have given up any hope of attracting black votes, so are trying to suppress the black vote. But, let's not get too political.]]
 * Reason: It shows an interesting part of U.S. History that has been all but forgotten.
 * Articles in which this image appears:
 * African Americans in the United States Congress
 * List of African-American Republicans
 * History of the United States Republican Party
 * List of African-American officeholders during the Reconstruction
 * FP category for this image:Featured_pictures/History/USA_History seems the best target.
 * Creator:Currier and Ives, restoration Adam Cuerden


 * Support as nominator -- Adam Cuerden (talk) 09:13, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Support Very historic, it's in good detail for pencil a lithograph, I don't mind featuring this nor putting my name on it. ---Saw1998 (talk) 14:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Technically, it's a lithograph. Lithographs create shading by a semi-random process of etching stone with acid: the longer acid is on the stone, the more and deeper pits form. When you're done etching it, the pits hold ink, which can be transferred to paper. The efffect does look a little like pencil sketching, but pencil sketching gets that look from paper grain, whereas lithographs come down to the grain of the rock. =) Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:23, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * My mistake. ---Saw1998 (talk) 00:13, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Conditional Support So long as the license on File:First colored senator and reps.png matches the license on this image (i.e. getting rid of the share-alike clause), and and probably a PNG of this restoration version (looks like paper was whitened more) is uploaded over the linked image and proper links in the images to indicate the PNG->JPEG versions. Coming out of retirement? — raeky  t  05:36, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Somewhat. Anyway, the PNG is fixed. Well, insofar as it can be fixed when Wikipedia can make TIFF support from scratch, but can't make the most popular lossless format work for large sizes, despite apparently having had working fixes for some time. Adam Cuerden (talk) 07:24, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Question - why have you retitled this for the nomination? Yomangani talk 00:52, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * There's Senates outside of the United States. While it's obvious in context that it's referring to the United States, for FPC, it's helpful to internationalise it a little, to give context. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:04, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * If that's what you were after, the subtitle makes it clear. Using the British English spelling of "colour" isn't appropriate for this image. Yomangani talk 01:17, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm British. It's how I spell things. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:32, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Support: clear EV, seems as good a representation as any. Why the fuss over the name of the nomination? It's just to give an idea of the subject matter. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 20:17, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Support Tomer T (talk) 10:11, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Support Very good EV.  Cat-five t  c   05:36, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

--Julia\talk 19:09, 8 December 2012 (UTC)