Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-01-30/Black History Month

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• Thanks for this! TrangaBellam (talk) 20:41, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

You're welcome. Please join in. It pretty much has to be one article at a time, although Wikidata really surprised me at the end. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:56, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

• While I'm surprised that the John C. Calhoun article didn't cover the topic better, I'm not on the whole surprised that Wikipedia didn't cover slaveholding for many congressmen, nor am I surprised that the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress didn't mention it that often (as seems to be the case). If you were a wealthy man from the South/border states up to the Civil War, it kind of goes without saying that you enslaved people. The reverse of being a man of such status and not owning other human beings would have been seen as more worthy of mention as an odd thing. Enslaving people was kind of a mundane (if brutal) fact of life for rich (and even middle class) landowners for much of American history. Only recently has it been seen as something especially worthy of mention and only recently have historians really tried digging through the weeds to fully understand the actual people who were enslaved. Thank you to Smallbones for structuring this in such a way to make it easy to fill the content gap. -Indy beetle (talk) 05:43, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
• Thanks! It appears the WaPo data for many/all entries do not include when the congressmen owned or how many souls (and although some congressmen have a link for more sources, not all do), or am I misreading? This info would help our articles better than yes/no, but it is a start, hopefully such data can be expanded. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:17, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Your reading looks correct to me. They are expanding the database via crowdsourcing (checked by reporters) updated maybe every 2 weeks. But your basic question< IMHO (based on some very limited database construction and intuition about WaPo fact checking standards) is that they have more data columns in a publishable form that they don't think their general audience would care to read. And behind that there should be another dataset that records the minor details and double checks that only would be used in case something has been called into question. And behind that would be organized notes or another dataset (or 2) documenting the process the records have gone through, comments, etc,) But I doubt that you'll see anything published in a reliable source (other than the updates) anytime soon. *Unless* they go through the extra step of describing the database in an academic journal and the academic editor asks for sourcing notes or additional data. That might take a year or more before its published. Exact counts of slaves on exact dates probably wouldn't be available anyway. More like census dates and page numbers. And I am just guessing.

All that said, I have to say that I contacted the main author before, and will do so again. She's been extremely cooperative and pleasant to deal with. You never know what people can do until you ask! 18:29, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

• One related thought: these articles will need watching, to prevent white-washing. Being a slave-owner is a touchy subject: when, while performing genealogical research, my step-mother discovered her ancestors owned people, her children were disgusted at the discovery. Undoubtedly there will be people who will try to remove those facts from articles. (As another example of white-washing, I was surprised that Winston Churchill has no mention of his love of alcohol. He drank heavily, even for his time.) -- llywrch (talk) 20:34, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

• Editors making improvements in this area may also find it useful to consult the highly-reliable (peer reviewed) open-access Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation, including its database Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 18:38, 4 February 2022 (UTC)]
  • L Thank you for informing us about the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation. I hadn't been aware of it, and it looks like a very impressive journal that meets a tremendous need. I had to take a quick look at it when you mentioned it, and that quick look turned into a couple of hours. There are 14 datasets included in the journal, with 3 published per quarterly issue. They are quite varied, with about 3 being about Rio de Janeiro, another on Blacks and the British legal system, etc. The only dataset I saw that might apply here was court and other records from Louisiana which turns out to be a series of datasets. It is an academic journal, so may not be that useful in general to newby editors or non-academics, but it has certainly grabbed my interest. Thanks again. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:46, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

• I think more attention needs to be given to African-Americans who owned slaves and prospered, as represented for example in Category:Black slave owners in the United States. This, like direct involvement of Africans (as catchers, transporters, sellers, etc., both before and after European involvement began, which was after the earlier Arabian and Indian involvement) in the profitable African slave trade (which was originally a solely in-Africa-only trade), is one of the important and lesser-known aspects of the history of slavery here in the U.S.A. and elsewhere – Athaenara ✉ 18:44, 12 February 2022 (UTC)