Talk:Fielding L. Wright

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I have just modified 2 external links on Fielding L. Wright. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050831185200/http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/features/feature48/governors/wright.htm to http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/features/feature48/governors/wright.htm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20041025103538/http://www.mscode.com/free/statutes/37/115/0035.htm to http://www.mscode.com/free/statutes/37/115/0035.htm
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Balance