Talk:Fielding L. Wright

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GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Fielding L. Wright/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: SerAntoniDeMiloni (talk · contribs) 16:33, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi Jon698, I'll be reviewing this. I'll have a read through and put down my thoughts! Thanks. SerAntoniDeMiloni (talk) 16:33, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for the slight delay! I'm on it now. I've written the feedback and it would be great if you could respond to each point.

Intro

Well written, but I think would be better longer. I've written what I would suggest as the intro?

'Fielding Lewis Wright (May 16, 1895 – May 4, 1956) was an American politician who served as the Lieutenant Governor and the Forty-Ninth Governor of Mississippi. During the 1948 presidential election he served as the vice presidential nominee of the States' Rights Democratic Party alongside presidential nominee Strom Thurmond.

Wright attended Gardner–Webb University and University of Alabama, graduating with a law degree and was later admitted to the legal bar in September 1916. During World War I, he enlisted in the U.S. Army as a member of the 149th Machine Gun Battalion inside the 38th Infantry Division. He later served as the commander of the 105th Engineer Combat Battalion until 1919, when he was honourably discharged.

After entering politics in the 1920s, he was elected to the state legislature where he served in the late 1920s and through the 1930s. Following the death of Speaker Horace Stansel he rose to the Speakership of the state House of Representatives. After a brief absence from politics he was elected as Mississippi's Lieutenant Governor and served until he ascended to the governorship following the death of Thomas L. Bailey in November 1946.

Wright was re-elected as the 50th Governor of Mississippi on November 4, 1947. During his gubernatorial tenure, the National Guard was called up with the start of the Korean War; race relations in the state began to gradually improve; and teachers’ salaries were improved. There were also educational progressions, including the expansion and creation of several Mississippi Universities.

In 1948 Alabama suggested him as a candidate for the vice presidential nomination of the breakaway States' Rights Democratic Party; a party with the aim of preventing Harry S. Truman's presidency. He accepted the nomination on August 11. During the general election he and South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond won the popular and electoral votes of the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, and received one faithless electoral vote from Tennessee.

Wright completed his gubernatorial term on January 22, 1952, and retired from public service. He was defeated in a 1955 reelection bid, and passed away on May 4, 1956.'

Early life and education

• Possibly move "On July 16, 1917, he married Nan Kelly and would later have two children with her" to the end. This would allow a continuation of the chronological order.
• Rest is good.

Career

• Create a separate section for the 'Vice President nomination' - this feels like a key piece of information. It would also fit nicely as a DYK in the future.

Later life

• It may be worth specifying what the 'United Cerebral Palsy' is.

References

All done well. Thumbs up here.

Images

All done well.

Overall

Very well written article. It would be great if we can address the above and make this GA!

Note

Hi Jon698. Just to add, there's currently a bit of a backlog with GA nominations... It would be great if you could help reduce some of these by reviewing other nominations. Wikipedia tries to get 2 noms reviews per one you put out (I was hoping to get one of my articles Leslie Goonewardene reviewed). If you don't have the time, that's also totally fine! I'll move on to William Henry Harrison III this afternoon. SerAntoniDeMiloni (talk) 10:12, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

• @SerAntoniDeMiloni: Thank you for your review. I have added a few paragraphs to the lead, and did what you asked in "Early life and education" and "Later life". However, for the "Career" in my opinion it is best to divide the 1948 presidential election between his affiliation with the Democratic and Dixiecrat parties. It has been some time since I have reviewed a GA nominee so I will look at some in the politics and history categories today. - Jon698 talk 12:28 16 June 2020 (UTC)

• @Jon698:. No worries, I can go with that. I'll review below.

Review

Hi Jon698. My review is attached. Enjoy the GA!

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Did you know nomination

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: withdrawn by nominator, closed by Flibirigit (talk) 17:51, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that Mississippi Governor and segregationist Fielding L. Wright had a $50,000 lawsuit filed against him by an Imperial Emperor of the Ku Klux Klans of America? "Florida Klan Merger Explained By Spinks". Clarion-Ledger. February 2, 1950. p. 2. Archived from the original on May 5, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Battle of Big Black River Bridge

Improved to Good Article status by Jon698 (talk). Self-nominated at 20:41, 17 June 2020 (UTC).

• Article was promoted to GA on 16 June. No issues with article that I can see, hook is interesting and source is used in article. QPQ is done. Looks good to me! PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 07:32, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

per talk —valereee (talk) 13:54, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

• I am perfectly fine with the halting of this as I originally thought that the article covered enough of his anti-civil rights and pro-segregationist views. However, now that I had time to review it is obviously lacking. - Jon698 (talk) 14:03 1 July 2020

• @Valereee: Well I found something really interesting for a new DYK hook. Could this replace the current hook? I picked the original hook for the oddity of a KKK leader suing a racist governor, but this new hook would tie into Wright's career more suitably and it would still be an attention grabber. - Jon698 (talk) 15:15 1 July 2020
• ALT1 ... that the execution of Willie McGee, conducted during Mississippi Governor Fielding L. Wright's tenure, was included in a petition by the Civil Rights Congress to the United Nations? Mississippi A History. Civil Rights Congress. 1952. p. 192 – via Google Books.

That looks interesting! I think we could have kept the alt that was already in queue (with 'and segregationist' added) but Levivich was concerned about NPOV at the article itself, which seemed like it was going to take longer to fix than could be done by tomorrow. —valereee (talk) 16:43, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

• I don't understand what the ALT1 hook is supposed to mean. Was this petition supposed to be some kind of appeal to prevent the execution, a documentation of inappropriate or racially biased executions after the fact in the hopes of preventing similar executions in the future, or what? (Also, you can't include an execution in a petition, though you can include a report or condemnation of it.) The article's wording is similarly opaque. BlueMoonset (talk) 21:45, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

• @BlueMoonset: How about now? - Jon698 (talk) 22:23 17 July 2020

• Jon698, for future reference, it's not okay to rewrite hooks, since the prior discussion then makes no sense; it's why we do separate ALT numbers for each. I've restored the original ALT1, and listed what you changed it to as ALT2 below:

• ALT2: ... that Willie McGee's execution, ordered by Governor Fielding L. Wright, was listed as an example of genocide being committed against black people by the Civil Rights Congress?

The hook is still problematic, I'm afraid; "ordered by Governor Fielding L. Wright tenure" isn't acceptable or grammatical, and the only revision I can think of, to "ordered during Governor Fielding L. Wright's tenure", is kind of blah—he was governor at the time of the trial and the death sentence that resulted from it. Did Wright intervene in the matter? Did he criticize the various stays of execution? Did he just let it happen (which was pretty typical back then)? I'll be honest: I'm uncomfortable that this article was promoted to be a Good Article in its current condition, as I don't feel it meets the "clear and concise" criterion, and the comments made by Levivich and others on the article's talk page about the article's inadequate balance and neutrality should have prevented its approval and in any case these issues are more than enough to disqualify it from DYK, which requires neutrality in its own criteria, unless the article is extensively revised to address the issues. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:37, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

• @BlueMoonset: Just wondering, but is the hook itself okay while I can expand the execution part in the article? Obviously going to work with him on improving the article before this goes up as a DYK.

• Jon698, no, I'm afraid the hook isn't okay (and shouldn't have been edited in place to remove "tenure"; please always propose a new ALT if you need to make any changes). The article says, in Wikipedia's voice, that Wright "had the execution of McGee carried out". Such a strong statement absolutely needs to be reliably and neutrally sourced to begin with, and for this to be used in a DYK hook, it needs to be sourced by the end of that sentence. (Wouldn't that have been the judge or jury who sentenced him to death? Governors can't make a sentence.) Wright might have authorized the execution, or done nothing to block it, but the source at the end of the following sentence doesn't say anything on the matter, and since the source is the Civil Rights Congress itself, it isn't a neutral source here since they are the ones charging genocide. (I didn't respond sooner because your ping didn't go through; when an edit isn't signed, any pings are ignored. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:07, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

• Significant issues still remain; when notified on their talk page, nominator said they would be fine with the nomination being closed. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:33, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Oddly presented material on a hardline segregationist

@SerAntoniDeMiloni and Jon698: Followed a chain of tangential research into Dixiecrats this afternoon, and thus to Wright. I was struck that the article is a GA yet makes little mention of his hardline segregationist stance and record of overtly racist positions and statements. Instead we have oblique mentions regarding e.g. "the region's racial beliefs". Especially in today's climate (but even beforehand, with regard to WP:WEIGHT), this is surprising.

Here's a fun quote addressing African Americans that comes up in a few sources:

If any of you have become so decided as to want to enter our white schools, patronize our hotels and cafes, enjoy social equality with the whites, then true kindness and sympathy requires me to advise you to make your homes in some other state

.

— Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:11, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: Thanks for letting me know. I'll make sure that the page has some edits to ensure that his segregationist and anti civil-rights stances are more clearly represented. Best, SerAntoniDeMiloni (talk) 22:52, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

See: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/31279248/ms-racist-governor-fielding-wright-mar/

The Oxford A-Level History book seems to list him as an 'Extreme racist'... It might be worth adding some of these views into the 'Legacy' section?

@Rhododendrites: Thank you for bringing this up. Could you find more sources from his career and I will add them into the article? - Jon698 talk 23:35 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Yeah. The laptop I was using earlier decided to reset so I don't have the tabs open, but will try to bring them back up and post here in the next few days. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:42, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

References

Sources

TLDR: The article does not cite reliable sources, resulting in an unbalanced presentation.

First apologies for the length, but I figured if I'm going to say a GA does not cite reliable sources, I really need to back that up.

It goes without saying, but let me say anyway, that this article obviously took a ton of work to build, and I think it may actually be the most thorough biography of Wright in existence. Notwithstanding my concerns about the sourcing, I think it's really terrific work.

Now, about the sources. Newspapers in the Deep South during and prior to the Civil Rights era in the US were openly racist. They are not reliable sources for anything related to race, especially as sources for local segregationist politicians. Almost all newspapers in Mississippi were pro-segregation and anti-civil rights. [1] Most of this article is sourced to Miss. newspapers like The Clarion-Ledger and The Greenwood Commonwealth.

Our article, The Clarion-Ledger, states Historically, both newspapers—The Clarion-Ledger and the Jackson Daily News—were openly and unashamedly racist, even by Deep South standards. As an example: in 1963, after Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the Clarion-Ledger ran a headline: "WASHINGTON IS CLEAN AGAIN WITH NEGRO TRASH REMOVED" [2]. PBS writes [3] of the paper's "segregationist past": "During the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s, The Clarion-Ledger and its sister newspapers were frequently labeled 'seg — or segregationist — rags' by critics ..." Miss. Encyclopdia writes [4] "Prior to 1970 the Clarion-Ledger and the other Hederman papers were known for their racist politics, promoting segregation and supporting the efforts of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a quasi-secret government agency." The same with The Greenwood Commonwealth, founded by Miss. governor James K. Vardaman, who once said "If it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy."

I've spent a little bit of time looking for better sources, and I've found some, but they're nowhere near as detailed as the contemporaneous newspapers:

• Kari Frederickson's The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 (cited in EL)
• Buchanan, Scott E. (2005). "The Dixiecrat Rebellion: Long-Term Partisan Implications in the Deep South". Politics & Policy. 33 (4): 754–769. doi:10.1111/j.1747-1346.2005.tb00221.x. ISSN 1747-1346. Retrieved 2020-06-30.
• Fajer, Marc A. (1997). "A Time for Reflection". University of Miami Law Review. 52: 925.
• NYT obit
• Miss. Encyclopedia
• EJI
• Mississippi: A History
• Some mention in [5] [6] [7]
• This McFarland book discusses the $50k lawsuit
• Enyclopedia entries on Dixiecrats:
  • Britannica
  • Encyclopedia.com
  • NC
  • SC
  • GA
  • AL

I think the article should spend more time discussing the things for which Wright is famous. Specifically, a few things should be prominently in the lead:

1. Wright was a founder and VP candidate of the Dixiecrats
2. After being elected in 1947, he abused his powers as governor to disenfranchise black voters
3. Openly advocated against civil rights and in favor of segregation

I see the "If any of you [African Americans] have become so deluded as to want to enter our white schools" quote has been added to the article - awesome - we might also consider adding this quote: "We shall insist upon segregation regardless of consequences." [8] [9]

I think the Dixiecrat platform should be expanded in the article. Planks 4 and 5: "[4] We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race ... We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program ... [5] We oppose and condemn the action of the Democratic Convention in sponsoring a civil rights program calling for the elimination of segregation ..." [10]

More should be said about what his running mate, Strom Thurmond, was about. E.g., in his Dixiecrat acceptance speech, Thurmond said: "There's not enough troops in the Army to break down segregation and admit Negroes into our homes, our theaters and our swimming pools". [11]

I think something should be said about the legacy of Dixiecrats, which is in many ways also the legacy of Wright: AL encyclopedia sums it up thusly: "Although the Dixiecrats have been dismissed as a failed third party, they were essential to southern political change. The Dixiecrat Party broke the South's solid historic allegiance to the national Democratic Party and in doing so inaugurated an unpredictable era in which white southerners grappled with a variety of efforts to thwart racial progress. Dixiecrats were prominent members of the White Citizens Councils and other so-called Massive Resistance organizations dedicated to upholding segregation that flourished throughout the region in the 1950s and 1960s. Although the Dixiecrats as a political entity did not survive past 1948, white southerners used the movement's organizational and intellectual framework to create new political institutions and new alliances in their desperate attempt to stymie racial progress and preserve power. Some Dixiecrats returned to the Democratic Party, and others, uncomfortable with the party's civil rights position, voted as political independents in the presidential elections of the 1950s. Since the late 1940s, the term "Dixiecrat" has become a generic term used to describe white southern Democrats opposed to civil rights legislation."

In summary, I think the lead should be revised per the above, and the contemporaneous news sources replaced with secondary sources, and anything that can't be sourced to a secondary source, should be examined to see if it should be attributed or removed. The source review is going to take a long time, but I think the lead should be revised before this goes to the main page as a DYK.

Again sorry this is so long and I'm criticizing a GA - let me say again, it's clear a ton of careful work went into this, and please forgive me for pooping all over it. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 02:34, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

• @Levivich: Thank you for the sources I will get to work on it now. - Jon698 talk 13:05 1 July 2020

However, I cannot agree with "TLDR: The article does not cite reliable sources, resulting in an unbalanced presentation." The majority of sources from those newspapers only give information about his early/personal life, career, elections, legislation, governmental actions, or actions taken during his gubernatorial service outside of racial issues. It would be completely impossible to find any available online sources to replace them as for some reason there is barely any coverage of him despite his massive importance in the Dixiecrat Party. - Jon698 talk 13:15 1 July 2020

• @Levivich: Sorry for the double ping, but I am having trouble loading the NYT obituary. Could you take screenshots of it and send it to me in the Wikipedia:Discord? - Jon698 talk 13:33 1 July 2020
  • @Jon698: No worries about the pings. Sorry, I don't have discord or datcord; I'm dating myself, but the last time I had a messaging app, it was AIM. I sent you an email though and am happy to send you the PDF by email. I'll reply to the balancing part below. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 19:23, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Please see WP:OFFLINE. ——Serial ^# 13:28, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

• If I can't read a source then how am I suppose to know what is in it to add to the article. Instead of adding absolutely nothing to this discussion how about you instead help with the improvement of this article like Levivich is. - Jon698 talk 13:39 1 July 2020

• How would you like a templated warning for not assuming good faith? Since I seem to be telling you things you have never heard before, but should have, I think that's probably extremely valuable information. If, on the other hand, you mean you have the right to demand that other editors make up for your lack of diligence, then I suggest you will soon run out of willing helpers... ——Serial ^# 13:44, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

• How is me wishing for you to give me a source that I can read not good faith? I am sorry if I came off as aggressive, but I simply want to be able to use the information given to me to help improve this article. - Jon698 talk 13:47 1 July 2020

• Well, per WP:VOLUNTEER, Jon698, we tend to do as much or as little as we like...some think that even advising on other people's articles is too much work. I guess we have enough of our own work without taking on others...Anyway, no problem re: the above. If you wikimail me, I've got some of these sources and will attach the relevant pages by return. The most important is probably the Am. Nat. Biog. article, but there should be something for you to mine in each. ——Serial ^# 14:09, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

• @Serial Number 54129: Wait you own the books? Lmao you could have just said that. I will email you in a little bit and thanks a million for those books they look really good from the little online that I can find of them. :) (Sorry for saying that you were contributing nothing if I knew you actually had the books I would have called you a godsend.) - Jon698 talk 14:12 1 July 2020

• Sent @Jon698: the following

1. Hathorn, B., “Otto Passman, Jerry Huckaby, and Frank Spooner The Louisiana Fifth Congressional District Campaign of 1976.” Louisiana History The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, vol. 54, no. 3, 2013
2. Bolton, C. C., The Hardest Deal of All The Battle over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980
3. Mulloy, D. J., Enemies of the State The Radical Right in America from FDR to Trump
4. Pietruza, D., 1948 Harry Truman’s Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America
5. Strong, D. (1955). The Presidential Election in the South, 1952. The Journal of Politics, 17(3), 343-389
6. Frederickson, Kari. “‘Dual Actions, One for Each Race’ The Campaign Against the Dixiecrats in South Carolina, 1948-1950.” International Social Science Review, vol. 72
7. Ader, Emile B. “Why the Dixiecrats Failed.” The Journal of Politics, vol. 15, no. 3, 1953, pp. 356–369
8. Feldman, G., The Great Melding War, the Dixiecrat Rebellion, and the Southern Model (Univ Alabama Press, 2015)
9. Goldfield, D., Black, White, and Southern Race Relations and Southern Culture (Louisia's S. Univ Press, 1990)
10. Martin, G. A., Count Them One by One Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote (Miss. Univ. Press, 2010)
11. Frederickson, K. (2000, February). Wright, Fielding Lewis (1895-1956), governor of Mississippi and vice presidential candidate. American National Biography

Obviously, I can't send entire books, because that would be a severe copyright violation. But for the future, remember we have a resource exchange which is pretty good at getting stuff like this even during this pandemic. ——Serial ^# 15:10, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Modern scholarship

• I wouldn't apologise for criticizing a GA; if this went to GAR it would probably fail WP:GA? on criteria 3 (broad in coverage) and 4 (neutrality). I can't many (literally, almost none) sources that aren't contemporary, and they do not provide either depth of breadth of coverage.
  There's plenty of modern scholarship; why has this not been used to a greater or lesser degree? E.g.

1. Martin, G. A., Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote (Miss. Univ. Press, 2010)
2. Goldfield, D., Black, White, and Southern: Race Relations and Southern Culture (Luis's S. Univ Press, 1990)
3. Busbee, W. F., Mississippi: A History (Wiley, 2015)
4. Sobel, R., Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States, 1789-1978 (Greenwood, 1988)
5. Feldman, G., The Great Melding: War, the Dixiecrat Rebellion, and the Southern Model (Univ Alabama Press, 2015)
6. Frederickson, K., The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 (Univ NC Press, 2001).
   And that took <10". ——Serial ^# 12:44, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
7. Frederickson, K. (2000, February). Wright, Fielding Lewis (1895-1956), governor of Mississippi and vice presidential candidate. American National Biography

• @BlueMoonset: any thoughts on the criteria? ——Serial ^# 12:54, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

• @Serial Number 54129: Umm? Did you even try looking at you own listed sources online? None of them are available for free online or are either extremely limited so I can't look at them myself for sourcing. - Jon698 talk 13:03 1 July 2020

• I'm afraid your ability or otherwise to access a source is irrelevant to WP:N, which is not only policy but a founding pillar of the project. And you may note the lack of a caveat at WP:WIAGA allowing for the criteria to be abandoned dependant on one's ability to adhere it it. ——Serial ^# 13:08, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
• @Serial Number 54129: ? If I can't read a source you provide then how am I suppose to use it as a source if I don't even know what the information inside is? - Jon698 talk 13:09 1 July 2020

Just curious but how did half my signature end up at the top of this thread? Did I do that? :-D Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 20:38, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Nope, that was SN :) P-K3 (talk) 20:49, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Balance

@Jon698: re my opening comment about an "unbalanced presentation": If we think of the article as a pie, one approach might be to say, well, this person lived ~60 years, so 1/3 of the pie should cover his first 20 years (1895-1915), 1/3 of the pie should cover ages 20-40 (1915-1935), and 1/3 of the pie should cover from age 40 to death (1935-1956). This apportionment might be called "balanced", but actually, it's just equal, not balanced.

Wikipedia is a tertiary source that summarizes secondary sources. If we look at all of the secondary sources (not primary sources like contemporaneous news coverage, but secondary sources like scholarship written by historians), almost all (90%?) of the secondary sources writing about Wright focus, often exclusively, on his years as governor, 1946-1952. Within that ~90%, it seems to me at least half of it focuses on what happened in 1948 with the Dixiecrats, and the other half focuses on the rest of his governorship. To me, a balanced article would reflect that. It would be something like 1/2 of the article spent on Dixiecrats, 1/4 on his governorship before and after 1948, and the remaining 1/4 on the rest of his life, 1895-1946 and 1952-56. Roughly, that's what I would think of as WP:DUE coverage.

Compare, for example, the Mississippi Encyclopedia article on Wright: The word "Dixiecrat" and Wright's opposition to Truman's 1948 "strong civil rights platform" is in the first sentence. In fact, these two items are given before they even give Wright's name. I think our lead should follow and say something like "anti-civil rights" and/or "pro-segregation" in the first paragraph, if not the first sentence.

As another example, look at our coverage of his 1947 election to governor. Our article says, "On June 12, he formally launched his campaign at a campaign rally in Rolling Fork where he showed his twenty-point platform which included support for veteran benefits, road improvements, sales tax exemptions, and stopping outside influence on Mississippi." That's cited to this 1947 article in the Hattiesburg American, which prints Wright's platform. Nowhere in the platform does it say anything about race or segregation. But that's because it's all in code (see dog whistle politics). Wright's platform #14 is "Conduct the Democratic primaries 'in such a manner as to preserve the heritage and traditions of the Southern Democrats so adequately protected by our forefathers'". That means continue to disenfranchise blacks, as Mississippi had been doing since the Civil War. #18: "Encourage higher moral teachings". #20: "Continue to battle 'outside meddlers' seeking to 'place our state in a false light and hold us up to scorn.'" The Hattiesburg American just prints this without comment. This book discusses the problems with MS newspapers' coverage of local civil rights issues.

Meanwhile, Mississippi Encyclopedia writes: "Because of his strong stand against civil rights, his support for states’ rights, and with the advantage of incumbency, Governor Wright accomplished a feat rarely seen in Mississippi politics: in 1947 he was elected governor in the first primary, over four opponents, in his first try for the state’s highest office." Nothing about his platform for road improvements or sales tax exemptions. That's what our article should say. We need to tell our reader that "stopping outside influence on Mississippi" means opposing racial integration. That's the difference between citing to a primary source and a secondary source.

So I think it's a feature, not a bug, that the secondary sources focus on his anti-civil rights record and not on the other parts of his life, and I think it's good if our article ends up doing the same in terms of how it "carves up the pie". Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 20:38, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

• @Levivich: Sorry about this, but can you clarify this. Are you talking about removing stuff from the article or increasing the amount of information for his gubernatorial tenure? (Edit: BTW can you give me your opinion on the recent changes to the article's body and lead?) - Jon698 talk 01:18, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

  @Jon698: Good question; I'd say both, really it's three: add, replace, remove.

  • Add material that's covered in the secondary sources but not yet covered in our article (e.g., segregationist platform of his 1947 gubernatorial campaign)
  • Replace citations to primary sources with citations to secondary sources (for material in secondary sources that's already in our article)
  • Remove anything trivial that may be covered in primary sources but is not covered in secondary sources. If it's not in the secondary sources, it's probably trivial. Occasionally, there might be good reason to cite something only to a primary source, often that means with attribution rather than in wikivoice. It's generally true that if a statement in wikivoice is cited only to a primary source, it's probably WP:OR. But as an example, you might keep a primary source citation if there is something uniquely useful to the reader about that primary source. For example, I'd keep the citation to the primary source that prints Wright's actual 1947 platform, because the reader will get value out of reading the original if they choose to do so.

  Here's another example. Normally I would just make this edit, but I thought in this case it might be more helpful to explain it here. Our article currently reads:

  ... After the Japanese attack on the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor the United States entered World War II and Wright attempted to rejoin the army, but was rejected due to his poor eyesight.

  Lieutenant gubernatorial

  After being rejected from the army Wright made plans to reenter politics. On November 19, 1942, he met with friends in Jackson, Mississippi and stated that he would be a candidate in the lieutenant gubernatorial election. In January 1943, he formally announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the lieutenant gubernatorial election. Walter D. Davis, a former member of the state House of Representatives and attorney in the Department of War, was appointed to serve as his campaign manager.

  In the initial primary he won with a plurality of the vote ahead of Paul Spearman and Charles G. Hamilton, who were eliminated, and John Lumpkin, who would continue onto the runoff primary. Wright defeated Lumpkin in the runoff with 155,265 to 108,661 votes winning the Democratic nomination. In the general election he faced no opponents along with Thomas L. Bailey, the gubernatorial nominee, who also faced no opponents.

  The state House and Senate passed a resolution allowing for Wright to be inaugurated one day before Bailey and Wright was inaugurated as the Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi on January 17, 1944 ...

  The above passage in our article could be reduced to something like:

  In 1943, Wright ran for Lietuenant Governor, stating that he had decided to pursue the office after being rejected by the Army for poor eyesight. His campaign was managed by Walter D. Davis, a former member of the state House of Representatives and attorney in the Department of War. After beating Paul Spearman and Charles G. Hamilton, Wright advanced to a runoff against John Lumpkin in the Democratic primary election, which he won with 155,265 votes to Lumpkin's 108,661. Wright and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Thomas L. Bailey were unopposed in the general election. Wright was inaugurated on January 17, 1944, one day before Bailey.

  Same sources, almost the same level of detail, half the length. It could be reduced further still. Also, the primary sources above should still be replaced by secondary sources whenever possible. For example, I'm not sure if it's OK to say that they ran unopposed and source that to a sample ballot published in the newspaper prior to the election. There is probably a secondary source out there that we can use to source that the Democratric candidates in the 1943 Miss. gubernatorial election were unopposed. In any event, this kind of condensing will allow you to expand other areas without increasing the overall length of the article. HTH, Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 04:19, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Sources