Wikipedia:Peer review/Strom Thurmond filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1957/archive1

Strom Thurmond filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1957

Looking to nominate this article (longest ever US Senate Filibuster) for FA soonish. Main concerns are full coverage (though I think that was ironed out fairly well in the GAR) and using book sourcing as opposed to web/newspapers.

Thank you so much!! AviationFreak💬 01:15, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Comments from Kavyansh

Placeholder. This is a classic politics article, which I'd definitely like to see at FAC!! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 13:49, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

• On August 28, 1957, United States Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina began a filibuster, or extended speech, intended to stop the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. — "United States Senator Strom Thurmond" looks like WP:SOB. Suggesting to rephrase the first sentence as: "On August 28, 1957, Strom Thurmond, a United States Senator from South Carolina began a filibuster, or extended speech, intended to stop the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957."
  • Done
• " United States Senator" v. "U.S. Senate" — consistency needed.
  • Opted for "United States Senat(e/or)", but kept "U.S." in other places for conciseness. Should this all be made consistent?
    • I think it is not absolutely necessary. 'U.S.' is fine, though try to remove it where mentioning the country is not important, the context makes it obvious that it is US. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 20:36, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
• "a record that still stands today." — today is bit vague. Better would be "as of 2022"
  • {{as of}} is used here in the wikitext, and I personally prefer "today" in the article prose. Is there a strong preference/guideline either way in the MOS or at FAC?
• "Thurmond's filibuster is widely seen as racist today" — replace 'Thurmond' by 'His'
  • Done
• "it opposed" — should be "he opposed"
  • Done
• African Americans can be linked.
  • Done
• "within two hours of Thurmond's speech concluding." — How about "within two hours after Thurmond's conclusion of the speech"
  • Done - I've been going back and forth on this wording, so it's good to have a second opinion to solidify things.
• I know it is optional, but I'll anyway suggest to remove the sidebar template.
  • Might do when adding more content if it gets in the way of images I plan to add
• Suggesting to link Civil Rights Act of 1957 in the prose.
  • Linked once in lede - Linked the first time used in non-lede prose as well, but from my reading of MOS:DUPLINK it shouldn't be linked much more than that.
    • Yes. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 20:36, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
• "the 15th Amendment" — why not "Fifteenth Amendment"?
  • Done
• "as Governor of South Carolina in 1946" — per my understanding of MOS:JOBTITLE, it should be "as the governor of South Carolina in 1946"
  • Done
• "and subsequent bid for president" — worth mentioning that he walked out of the Democratic Convention because the convention adopted Truman's Civil Rights plank. He then formed states' rights party.
  • Added info on party schism due to 1948 DNC civil rights debate, but it appears Thurmond himself did not participate in the walkout: [1]
    • The particular piece you cite here is a statement of Thurmond that he did not directly participate in the walkout; it can be considered a primary source. Author A. J. Baime, in his book Dewey Defeats Truman – The 1948 Election and the Battle for America's Soul, says: "Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina stepped onto the stage. 'Our fight is the fight of every American who does not want to be subjected to federal police control!' he yelled. Parts of the crowd booed Thurmond, who responded, 'It's medicine you don't want to hear.' A large group of delegates from Mississippi and Alabama gathered in the aisle and walked out, waving Confederate flags on their way". So, while not explicitly mentioned, Thurmond did play an important role in the walkout. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 19:34, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
• "reached in Richard Russell's" — Perhaps, "reached in Georgia Senator Richard Russell's"
  • Done

I'll currently stop here. A bit more information is needed about the 24 hour filibuster. Few changes in the structure of the article is also needed. We should be mentioning what Thurmond did for the speech before mentioning the activities during the speech. Statements like "Thurmond claimed to have taken daily steam baths [...]" needs to specify who claims it. Also, sources like Politico, The Evening Star, Fox News, The Cuero Record, and other news articles would be questioned at FAC. We need scholar sources like books and journals. Specifically, books on filibusters like [2], [3], [4], [5], etc much have mentions of this filibuster. To sum it up, the article has great potential, but it needs work before FAC. I have written FAs on American political topics of the same time period, like the Draft Eisenhower movement and the "Daisy" advertisement. If you wish, we can do a joint FAC nomination later and I would be more than happy to help. Let me know when to continue the peer review. Thanks for your work on the article! {{subst:endadh}} Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 18:35, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback! This will be my second FAC after Ted Kaczynski, and I think my main area of weakness is the minutiae of MOS so thank you for the corrections and rewordings. I've made a few of these changes - I'll make more later today when I have more time and then get to a more substantial rereferencing of the article and addition of information on the filibuster. Again, thank you for your help with this!! AviationFreak💬 19:49, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Ref notes for future reference:

• The following book sources on filibustering mention Thurmond in passing but provide little useful info on the filibuster itself: [6], [7], [8] (last source does assert that he used a catheter, which could be added to third paragraph of "Filibuster" section in support of rumors - still inconclusive though)
• [9] Does not appear to be archived or freely available online, but I may be able to access it via a library
• [10] is a book source which has considerable info on the filibuster
• [11] is a presumably reliable article in Time on the filibuster

Leaving these here for now, will come back to them for expansion. AviationFreak💬 22:26, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

@Kavyansh.Singh: There is certainly still much to be done (informal to-do here), but I wanted to get a bit of feedback on how the article looks so far and whether the sources need more migration. I plan to get rid of The Evening Star, The Sumter Daily Item, and AM 1450 KMMS, but the Fox News source is just being syndicated through Fox - The article was originally done by AP. I believe all of the non-book-sourced claims could be referenced to books, but would having citations from a relatively small number of very reliable book sources be preferable to a broader range of sources of reasonably high reliability (e.g. BBC News, NYT, Washington Post, etc.)?

You did not sign, so I did not receive the ping

Okay, so from what I know by my experience of 3 FACs and reviewing few other, sources for FAs should not just be reliable, but be the "highest quality reliable source". Now, for a topic where there is less or no coverage in book sources, reliable news sources are usually accepted. But, in my opinion, if a statement can be cited to both a news and book source, the book one should be preferred. In my FA "Daisy" advertisement, there are many contemporary news sources, as well as later scholarly sources. So while newspapers/news sources are not restricted in FACs, their over-reliance is not encouraged. I'd like to echo something Ealdgyth has pointed out in various of her source reviews: our work as encyclopedia writers should be to summarize what historians say. It is a historian's work to study contemporaneous newspapers, not ours. Back to the original question, I happen to believe that The New York Times is one of the most reliable newspaper, followed by the other 2 you mention. One thing I'd mention is that try not to use the 1957 news articles to cite evaluative claims. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 20:10, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Continuing:

• "Thurmond's claimed that" — should be "Thurmond claimed that"
  • Done
• "for penalties above a certain threshold" — what threashold?
  • Done
• "As the sun rose on the 29th," — better rephrase as "On the morning of 29 August,"
  • Done
• "over $7,000" — suggesting to use {{Inflation}}
  • Done
• "However, it has also been rumored that Thurmond was "fitted with a contraption devised for long motoring trips" that allowed him to relieve himself." — who claims that?
  • Done
• " on "throat lozenges and malted milk tablets"" — the prose does not make it clear where this direct quotation comes from.
  • Done; quote marks removed altogether as it's a short list of 2 items
• " Paul Douglas brought" — Mention that he was a senator from Illinois?
  • Done
• "Thurmond's filibuster has been widely described as racist" — was it considered racist immediately after his speech, or is that an evaluative claim?
  • Added prose-attributed quote from The Washington Post and briefly explained the nuance there as obviously Thurmond didn't come right out and call himself racist despite the logical interpretation of his actions
• "as Thurmond attempted to block a law that protected the right of African-Americans to vote" — I think this has been mentioned before in the Background section.
  • Worth restating here as it's central to the idea of this filibuster as racist?
• "Thurmond's filibuster in 1957" — should just be "the filibuster"; I think in this context, it is clear which filibuster we are talking about
  • Done
• "from members of his own party," — "even from Democrats"
  • Done
• "this time against the Civil Rights Act of 1964" — remove 'this time'
  • Done

– Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 20:36, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Kavyansh.Singh: Oki, I believe the references have been fixed (only potentially contentious thing is the Fox News source, but it's syndicated and written originally by AP). I've made your above suggested changes and added some more information to the article, particularly the "outcome" section. Let me know if there's anything else I should look at or modify, and thank you for all your help with this article so far!! Hopefully this ping works, sorry about the mix-up last time! AviationFreak💬 03:35, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

---

Few more things:

• "As a result, Thurmond received" — "Subsequently, Thurmond received"
  • Leaving as-is for the moment - "As a result" clearly shows a cause-and-effect relationship
• "was supported by Republicans and Democrats" — "was supported by both the Republicans and Democrats"
  • Done
• "Thurmond personally saw the bill" — "Thurmond saw the bill" (both imply the same meaning)
  • Done
• Is it known how was the bill an attack on Vice President Calhoun?
  • Looking back at the source, Thurmond saw it as an attack on states' rights, which Calhoun was an ardent supporter of. Clarified prose.
• "urged citizens to pressure their representatives to filibuster" — 'representatives' or 'senators'?
  • Changed to "senators"
• "a walkout over civil rights" — 'walkout' is eventually redirected to Quorum. Is that the best possible link?
  • I think linking to the "Quorum-busting" section of that article works better than the actual walkout article, which focuses specifically on labor strikes. The hatnote for "walkout (politics)" on that article leads to the Quorum-busting section of the Quorum article.
• "against Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey" — the common names are 'Harry S. Truman' and 'Thomas E. Dewey'
  • Done
• "more than 1 million votes" — spell 'one'
  • Done
• "4 days prior" — spell 'four'
  • Done
• "constituted "cruel and unusual punishment"" — "constituted a "cruel and unusual punishment""
  • Done and linked cruel and unusual punishment - Could be linked instead to Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, since that's very likely what he was referencing?
• "each of the 48 states in alphabetical order" — It might be worth adding in a footnote that Alaska and Hawaii were not states during the filibuster, thus 48 states.
  • Done
• "dwindled in population to just" — I'd remove 'in population'
  • Done
• Do we know for what Morse filibustered 22 hr 26 min?
  • Done - Interestingly enough, the Submerged Lands Act of 1953!
• "by President Dwight Eisenhower" — common name is "Dwight D. Eisenhower"; in the image caption as well
  • Done
• "according to the Washington Post" — "according to The Washington Post"
  • Done
• campaign of '[[massive resistance]]'" — campaign of '[[massive resistance]]{{' "}}
  • Done, was not familiar with this trick - Thank you!
• "including Herman Talmadge, Richard Russell" — These names have already been mentioned, We could simply write there surnames
  • Done
• "who had been elected" — "who was elected"
  • Done
• "However, it has also been rumored" — try not to use 'however' often in the prose. Here, it is not required.
  • Done
• Sources look better, though they need url-access-date
  • Done for all web sources, but [does not appear that this is necessary for the book sources].

That is it on a quick read. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 09:33, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

@Kavyansh.Singh: All done unless otherwise stated. Thank you again!! Does this look FAC-able to you? AviationFreak💬 22:08, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

The article is much better that what it was. Just one last question. Do all the sources you cite discuss just this information, i.e., is there anything else which sources present and we don't use. Also, a citation for Note-1. Otherwise, I'll say "go for it"! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 04:19, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the only things that appear in sources but not in the article are minor trivia, and just about everything that appears in multiple sources is in the article. Don't have time to take it to FAC right now, but I'll get on that later tonight. Added the Note-1 ref. Thank you again so much for your help with this article!!! AviationFreak💬 17:20, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

All good! It was my pleasure to review the article. Do ping me/leave a message at my talk page whenever you take this to FAC! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 17:37, 1 March 2022 (UTC)