# Talk:Alma Vessells John

This review is transcluded from Talk:Alma Vessells John/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Mujinga (talk · contribs) 03:57, 3 October 2020 (UTC)


### Initial comments
Hi SusunW, I'll take this on for review as part of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives/October 2020. I'll hope to add the review within the next 24 hours. Mujinga (talk) 03:57, 3 October 2020 (UTC)


### Template
### Review
#### Lead
A nice big lead! I'll come back to this and the infobox last. Mujinga (talk) 10:43, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
"Her post at both organizations was to" - "post" reads strangely to me here, is that just a US/Br Eng thing?
I see nothing wrong with post, but changed it to position  Done SusunW (talk) 14:33, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
"radio producer" - would this better something like "radio and television personality"? In any case, her TV work can be mentioned too
 Done SusunW (talk) 14:33, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
"newspaper columnist" - there isn't anything about this in the body text, except writing a newsletter
I actually had a couple more articles pulled up at Old Fulton to add but the site went off line and I could no longer access them. Frustrating, but after waiting a week for the site to come back, I gave up. Changed the verbiage to read newsletter writer. SusunW (talk) 14:33, 3 October 2020 (UTC)


#### Infobox
As above, her TV work can also be mentioned in occupation
 Done SusunW (talk) 14:34, 3 October 2020 (UTC)


#### Early life and education
"a family of nine siblings, who" - since the subject is "family" which would be better than who
 Done SusunW (talk) 14:37, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
"They read" - source says the dad made them all read it, so maybe "the family" is better than "they", since that suggested to me it was her and her dad reading it
 Done SusunW (talk) 14:37, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
routes-mag says she studied at New York University as well as Harlem covered later onMujinga (talk) 11:27, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
for note 2, maybe just easier to say "whether her name is spelled Vessells or Vessels" with the refs on each version
 Done SusunW (talk) 14:37, 3 October 2020 (UTC)


#### Nursing (1929–1951)
Repetition of "Harlem Hospital", it's mentioned in first and second sentence
 Done Changed to them. SusunW (talk) 14:43, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
"As an assistant to Estelle Massey Riddle, John and Riddle were tasked" reads weird since Riddle is mentioned twice
Changed to they SusunW (talk) 14:43, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
Still reading weird to me, I'd suggest something like "Working with Estelle Massey Riddle, she helped to eliminate" or "As an assistant to Estelle Massey Riddle, she was tasked with helping to eliminate" Mujinga (talk) 09:53, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
 Done SusunW (talk) 13:31, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
"basic education, to complete nursing training," maybe better as "basic education in order to complete nursing training,"
 Done SusunW (talk) 14:43, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
"To reach broader audiences" could start a new paragraph
 Done SusunW (talk) 14:43, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
"she wrote a script Brown Women in White for production on WNBC" - Just randomly saw this on http://archives.nypl.org/uploads/collection/generated_finding_aids/scm20710.pdf: "She wrote the script for the program, Brown Women in White, which was aired on sixty-nine stations." - 69 stations seems a lot, maybe worth adding. And if this is what made her name, maybe it's worth another sentence or too. Oh now I see the radio and television section starts with The Homemaker's Club  in 1952 so maybe i am jumping the gun here.
I added a sentence, who, what, where ;) (the 69 stations was in several sources, but I had no idea that was a large number).  Done SusunW (talk) 15:04, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
"only 14 still barred African-American students" and "though there were still gaps in opportunity and pay nationwide" not in source
Reworked first part. 2nd part definitely in the source "There still are 'wage  differentials' in the North as well as the South, and Negroes still have 'insufficient opportunity' to train as nurses".  Done SusunW (talk) 15:04, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
thanks for clarification  Done Mujinga (talk) 09:55, 4 October 2020 (UTC)


#### Radio and television (1952–1978)
What's Right with Teenagers sounds great!
I know, right? SusunW (talk) 15:15, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
"wide variety of guests" - the MLK link says Rosa Parks so she could be added, the other ref I cannot check, see below
Added Parks. Question, do you think it is overlink? Should I link all of them, or just the ones people probably don't know? And on the references, yes, I know. Old Fulton went down. There were several hits in my search of that source, specifically for the New York Amsterdam News, which I cannot find digitized anywhere else, that I couldn't access after the site went down. Soooo frustrating. SusunW (talk) 15:15, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm in favour of linking them all, and will reply below about Fulton Mujinga (talk) 09:55, 4 October 2020 (UTC)


#### Later career (1977–1986)
Nothing to add


#### Death and legacy
"She was remembered for her contributions in the fight for civil rights, nursing, and as a pioneer radio personality" - I don't doubt this, but the current source doesn't really back the claims
Added a cite  Done SusunW (talk) 15:27, 3 October 2020 (UTC)


#### Images
The infobox image is stunning!
I know right? So lucky that the people at the Detroit library were so helpful about verifying no copyright info on the photo and finding that it was published. I was stoked! SusunW (talk) 15:34, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
All images public domain, therefore fine
Only the infobox image has an "alt=" so these could be added for the others
 Done SusunW (talk) 15:34, 3 October 2020 (UTC)


#### References
Overall very impressive and easy to check, thank you
This one is not working for me right now - "Sister Alma John, Versatile Lady" (PDF). New York Amsterdam News. New York, New York. April 20, 1974. p. D-12. Retrieved September 24, 2020. - seems like fultonhistory.com is down
See above comments, site went down on September 25th and have not been able to access it since. (I actually checked with other editors to see if I was blocked because I was in Mexico, but was told by editors in the US and Europe that they cannot access it either, so I assume it is down). SusunW (talk) 15:37, 3 October 2020 (UTC)


### Hold
I'm putting this on hold and I'm pretty sure we can work through the mostly minor issues. My main concern right now would to have something about her newspaper writings and to check on that reference Mujinga (talk) 12:32, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Would that I could Mujinga, as I said earlier, there were more clippings from New York Amsterdam News, but they are now inaccessible. There are clues about journalist activity, but I didn't think enough to cover it properly. See Clark, p 1 under "columns" . That certainly looks like newspaper work but I was unsure without having more detail. Adamczyk lists a whole bibliography of sources about her that I cannot find anywhere. Part of that is her era, but a bigger part of that is that she was 1) a woman and 2) African-American. Women's and ethnic history was not written until the 1970s, and when scholars began focusing on these areas, they began with women shown in artworks through the ages and suffragists and male leaders. Women civil rights and women's rights activists of the 1950s and 1960s were mostly still living at that time and scholarly work on them is just now beginning. Most black newspapers have not been widely digitized, the digitization of the Associated Negro Press is behind a paywall in a special collection not accessible with a regular subscription to ProQuest, and many black archives are private. Makes writing difficult. Not impossible, but hard. SusunW (talk) 15:50, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
Thank you so much for reviewing the article. Advise if more work is needed. SusunW (talk) 15:50, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
@SusunW: Thanks for the fast answer and the responses. Oh right I see about Fulton, that's a shame. Let's hope it comes back! I'm more than happy to AGF on the source for now, since your referencing is topnotch. You probably know this trick already but I try to archive sources on wayback by clicking the "View history" tab then "Fix dead links" tab, which takes me to an IAbot page. I tick the "Add archives to all non-dead references (Optional)" box then click "Analyze" and it will produce wayback machine arhcive links. I think this is done by a bot eventually as well, but I like to do it at the end of a session. Just tried it for this article and got no modifications. My only remaining issue is on the Riddle sentence, it still reads funny to me. When that's resolved this will be a good article in my opinion. Mujinga (talk) 10:02, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
Mujinga changed the sentence at Riddle. I had no idea you could archive a whole article's links. I save them individually as I go. Especially since not everything works with wayback and for some you must use archive.today. I'll try your trick. Thanks for teaching me. On the New York Amsterdam News I was formatting the ref and hadn't saved it yet, when I pulled up wayback to save it, it said the site wasn't available on the live web. That was my first clue something was wrong. I could see the open link on my browser, but couldn't open any others nor search, so I wrote everything I could from the source and hoped that it'd be back the following day. But not. Anyway, thank you so much for your help. Really appreciate it. SusunW (talk) 13:39, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
Great, congrats on another good article. Please do keep 'em coming! On my tip, actually it might not work so well with sfn referencing style, but anyway at least you know about it now. All the best, Mujinga (talk) 14:16, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
Mujinga Old Fulton is back. Haven't found anything more about writing, but was able to save the link we couldn't access in wayback, if you want to check it. SusunW (talk) 16:59, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the headsup! It seems to be down again but I was able to see the link on wayback machine and added the archived url tto the citation Mujinga (talk) 17:08, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Oh good grief, but at least it is now saved in wayback. SusunW (talk) 18:03, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

I find it rather interesting that none of the TV shows listed here that she worked in, created, wrote for, ran, etc. have their own entries either here at Wikipedia or at IMDb.
One would think that if those shows were that important, there'd be more about them.
Or am I missing something. 2600:8800:785:2A00:C23F:D5FF:FEC4:D51D (talk) 22:18, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

It is indicative of the segregated era in which she lived most of her life. Women's and black history topics did not evolve as topics of academic study until after 1970, so it seems perfectly logical to me that works they created may not have been studied either. Limited access to the Associated Negro Press is also an issue for these topics as mainstream US newspapers rarely covered black events. SusunW (talk) 22:36, 8 November 2020 (UTC)