Talk:George S. Benson

Article imbalance - Recentism

It seems like the edits to this page starting in 2018 have been focused on recent controversy around integration at Harding University. About 2/3 of the current article is focused on that topic even though it was not part of the Notability justification behind the creation of his article in the first place. Some of this content should be removed, or other content added to bring the article back into balance.

Some of this content also appears unbalanced or inappropriate. A couple examples of particular concern:

• There are three sentences about what James D. Bales said. He is not the subject of this article, so that content could be in his article but shouldn't be in this one.
• "Benson believed that black people..." should be more factually stated. "During a sermon on this date, Benson stated that..."
• "Benson continued to resist integration until the Civil Rights Act forced him to acquiesce or lose federal funding" should be more factually stated. "It is alleged that anticipation that the June 1964 Civil Rights would strip federal funding was a primary motivation behind the fall 1963 decision to integrate". And add balance such as that Harding was the 2nd private college in AR to integrate and Benson's earlier comments that "the community was not yet ready" to integrate. Any quotes or sources that support that the Civil Rights act was a primary motivation should be added as well so it doesn't come across as speculation. Tigerbaritone (talk) 04:45, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

It will take some time to review the sources and give a thorough response, as I have a lot going on right now, and you're challenging a lot of material, most of which is already sourced in the article. Adding additional cites of the same refs will help. Hopefully someone else will step in. Your interest in the article is appreciated, but be sure to avoid whitewashing and censorship. As far as fact-checking goes, the bibliography of this study [1] as well as the bibliography of the book Key, Barclay. Race and Restoration: churches of Christ and the African American Freedom Struggle are good places to start.Jacona (talk) 14:42, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for responding. I'll try to avoid whitewashing or censorship, but I'd appreciate you letting me know if you feel that are of my edits do that. Thank you for the source suggestions; I've started to dig into those. Tigerbaritone (talk) 01:19, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

@Jacona: Hi Jacona. Regarding this text "Eventually, Benson dismissed Floyd from the college." I can't find that at the source you cited. It does mention that Robert Meyers was dismissed. Meyers discusses this in Voices of Concern p253: "When the president of the school, under urging by some members of the Bible faculty, decided against renewing my contract..." On p168 of the same book (also quoted by Haymes), Floyd writes "I was told in private by one administrator...that if I wanted to crusade for integration I should go where everyone believes in it." But it doesn't seem like this was Benson or that he was actually dismissed.

• You are correct, the source actually states Robert R. Meyers was dismissed by Benson, I'll remove this from the article. Benson was famous for firing/forcing to resign/expelling students and faculty who held positions that were inconvenient to him, including a student who was expelled for "consorting with Catholics" by working for the Searcy Citizen. Funny how a person who professed to love the American Way so much found the first amendment so wonderful when applied to himself, yet so egregious when others dared to express an opinion he found offensive!. Jacona (talk) 13:46, 19 April 2021 (UTC)