Talk:Groveland Four

Comments

Although individual articles have been created for each of the four, there is currently almost no biographical information in any of those four articles that isn't about the case. Articles do sometimes take awhile to evolve, so I won't act on it right now. But if that remains the case, and no one has anything substantive to add about any of the men's lives outside of this case, then each man's individual name probably should just be a redirect to this article, with this article having comprehensive info about the case. Mwelch 22:46, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I am planning to combine this article with the Willis V. McCall article section on the Groveland Four. Either by putting a redirect from Groveland Four article to Willis V. McCall article or by deleting the Groveland Four section from Willis V. McCall article and putting a link there to the separate Groveland Four article. Any comments or preferences on which way to do this?--Bchampion 11:24, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

The latter. There is a decent amount of info in the Groveland Four article that's not directly about McCall. Enough to justify its existence as a separate article. However, I wouldn't delete the GF section from the McCall article entirely. Just condense it to a summary and then, as you mention, put a {{main|Groveland Four}} tag at the beginning of that section. Mwelch 18:58, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense to me. I will leave this open for additional comments for a while before I do anything. Thanks for the input. --Bchampion 16:26, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

The paragraph that begins with "Six weeks ... " starts with one humongous sentence that ought to be reconstructed into somewhere between three and six simpler sentences. ;Bear (talk) 17:53, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Agree with merge for Groveland Four and Groveland Case. Too much overlap to maintain them separately and facts are getting lost between them. Parkwells (talk) 22:50, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Ridiculous euphemism

"killed as a suspect by a posse after leaving the area"? It's called lynching. MissNDesmond (talk) 17:57, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Merger proposal

Formal request has been received to merge the articles Groveland Four and Groveland Case, dated December 2018. Proposer's Rationale: both covering almost identical material. Pinging proposer @Deisenbe: Discuss here. Richard3120 (talk) 18:19, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, definitely merge the articles. I recommend keeping the name "Groveland Four" because that term is in greater use than "Groveland Case." A Google search of "Groveland Four" gives 386,000 results, while a search of "Groveland Case" only gives 12,600 results. Waters.Justin (talk) 14:37, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Articles should be split if it is justified based on different content or the size of the article, and neither applies here, so the different articles should be merged. See Wikipedia:Splitting. --Waters.Justin (talk) 13:30, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree that Groveland Four is the better name. deisenbe (talk) 11:03, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

• Merge, no particular preference what title wins - maybe "Groveland Four" per above. Time to close this. Johnbod (talk) 15:32, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
• Merge, this has been waiting too long. Groveland Four seems a good title. Doug Weller talk 13:42, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

 Done GenQuest ^"scribble"

Alleged attack

Does anyone else the article is a little too light on details about the alleged attack? The lead is supposed to summarise the body but currently [1] the body after details on the four falsely accused starts off with

Ernest Thomas, Charles Greenlee (age 16); Samuel Shepherd (age 22), and Walter Irvin (age 22), were identified by the police as suspects. Shepherd and Irvin were both veterans of service in the Army; and both Thomas and Greenlee were married.
Irvin and Shepherd were arrested shortly after Padgett reported the attack.

There is no mention of Padgett before now in the body, not even her given name, nor of an attack so it's very confusing. Yes the lead does say "falsely accused of raping 17-year-old Norma Padgett and assaulting her husband on July 16, 1949", but that's not how this is supposed to work. There should not be details in the lead that aren't in the body. The given name is mentioned one time later in relation to a confession but that's still not how the body should be written, nor is there any mention of the assault on Padgett's husband.

While the details of alleged crimes leading to racially motivated lynchings and prosecutions can sometimes be murky, we still IMO need to give some summary of what is known and suspected as background rather than just suddenly starting off with what the injustices committed even though these are the focus of the article. See for example the article on Emmett Till. Given the later discussion of the examining doctor's findings, as well as the mention of an assault in the lead, my guess is probably the husband was really assaulted by someone although the identity of this person and their race will probably never be known; and what if anything happened to Padgett herself may not be so clear.

I'm not saying we necessarily need to discuss that early on, it may be fine to simply discuss it in the case part as we do now. But we do need at a minimum something like "On July 16 1949, X ?Padgett reported he had been assaulted and his wife Norma had been raped. He identified the assailants as four black males. The sheriff documented injuries on X's body and face, and Norma was examined by Dr. Geoffrey Binneveld." or whatever is supported by reliable sources, rather than suddenly staring off with how the four falsely accused were treated.

Note there may be other details which if known, will cast quite a different light on the case. For example consider the case if RS support something like this "On July 15 1949 Sheriff Willis McCall observed injuries on X ?Padgett and questioned him. Padgett refused to comment and McCall asked him to visit his office the next day. During this visit Padgett still initially refused to say what happened finally after an hour said he had been assaulted by four black men. After a four hour interview X ?Padgett said his wife Norma had been raped. She was sent for examination by Dr. Geoffrey Binneveld."

Nil Einne (talk) 04:48, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

No analysis?

Shouldn't there be a section for reactions to and sociological evaluations of the systemic racism that played out here? ♆ CUSH ♆ 10:15, 19 August 2023 (UTC)