Talk:Harry J. Capehart/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Larry Hockett (talk · contribs) 13:56, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

I'll be happy to review this. It looks quite well done at first glance. I will leave some initial feedback soon. Larry Hockett (Talk) 13:56, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Preliminaries: The article is stable, appears to use neutral tone (after a quick read), and as far as copyright, neither Earwig's tool nor Google phrase searches turn up anything of concern.

Lead

• In 1913, he commenced the practice of law in Keystone, where he opened a law office. - Sounds circular - could we condense this? Since we just mentioned that he finished law school in 1913, we could say something like "The same year, he opened a law office in Keystone." The reader can infer that he was commencing his law practice.

• Thank you for this recommendation! I've incorporated your suggested rephrasing into the lead. -- West Virginian (talk) 12:45, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• Republican Party is linked in the third and fourth paragraphs, but one of the links is piped to the West Virginia Republican Party. If we're making the point that he was particularly active at the state level, it might be worth letting West Virginia Republican Party show in the text. What do you think?

• I concur, and have adjusted the first mention of the party to read as "West Virginia Republican Party." Thank you for this suggestion! -- West Virginian (talk) 12:45, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Early life and education

• "assist his widowed mother in raising himself and his four siblings" - I'd shorten to "assist his widowed mother in raising his four siblings" as the reader can infer that no one else was available to raise him.

• I've modified this accordingly. -- West Virginian (talk) 12:55, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• If it is possible to be more specific about when he delayed his education, that might help the reader. If I'm not mistaken, secondary education in the U.S. means high school to some people and sixth grade to other people.

• Unfortunately, the available sources do not offer additional information on when his education was delayed. For this reason. I've removed the mention of secondary and post-secondary, after re-reviewing the sources, and have changed this sentence to "he was forced to delay his education to earn money to assist his widowed mother..." Please let me know if you have any suggestions for how to further improve this sentence, given the lack of specificity in the references. Thanks again for this comment. -- West Virginian (talk) 12:55, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• I was able to find a source with a date for his completion of education at Fairview Normal School (1901). Given that he completed this course at Fairview in 1901 and did not graduate from Howard until 1913, it is likely his hiatus occurred between these two years. I've reordered this section so that these events are in chronological order. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for further improvement given the available sources. Thanks again! -- West Virginian (talk) 13:11, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• Having received his literary education" - By literary education, are we talking about a degree in literature or is this a term used for something else? I don't think I've heard this specific phrase before, and it made me do a double-take as I was reading.

• I had the same question regarding this description of his education in the sources, which refer to it as a "literary education." Would it be a stretch if I worded this in the prose as, "Having received his education in literature at Fairview Normal College..."? -- West Virginian (talk) 12:55, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Law career

• This section looks good. I noticed the coverage of the Melvin Loveless case, but I notice that you covered that in a subsequent section. Good work.

Going to pause here for now. Larry Hockett (Talk) 23:19, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

• Thank you so much for your thoughtful, thorough, and comprehensive review and feedback. -- West Virginian (talk) 13:14, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

WV House of Delegates

• Only a minor point (probably outside of the scope of GA): I think we capitalize the second element in hyphenated phrases like Thirty-Fourth West Virginia Legislature, because (if I understand correctly) the whole phrase is considered a proper noun. There are a few of these in this section.

• Thank you for this catch! I've capitalized all of these instances accordingly. -- West Virginian (talk) 13:18, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• "Capehart was a proactive member of the West Virginia House of Delegates" - I don't think we should state this in Wikipedia's voice. If he was described as proactive, we should state who described him as such.

• I've changed the beginning of this sentence to read, "Capehart was assigned to several important house standing committees,..." -- West Virginian (talk) 13:18, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• "The bill declared that lynching by mobs was a crime of murder, and that counties where this crime occurred were subject to forfeiture of $5,000" - The previous sentence mentions that Capehart modified the more severe provisions of the bill, so I'm assuming this sentence here reflects the final version. The reader may naturally wonder what those more severe provisions entailed.

• Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate Capehart's original proposed draft, or a description of it, in order to provide more background/context for this information. If and when this information becomes available, I will include it here, but unfortunately I have not been able to locate it at this time. Please let me know how best to handle this in the prose. -- West Virginian (talk) 13:18, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Business pursuits

• I'd consider trying to merge this section with the Law Career section since they are both short and the timeline runs together. Again, outside the scope of GA, so feel free to disregard if you don't think it helps the timeline to flow smoothly.

• I've merged these sections per your recommendation, and changed the header to "Law and business careers." Please let me know if this works! -- West Virginian (talk) 13:20, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Personal life

• I would take out the description of Anna as an accomplished teacher because her accomplishments are not made clear and the wording is already basically close paraphrasing of the source.

• I've modified this to, "Educated in Washington, Anna was a teacher prior to their marriage." -- West Virginian (talk) 13:22, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• "the Bible, the works of" - need an and before the works for grammar purposes.

• I've amended this accordingly. -- West Virginian (talk) 13:22, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Later life

• It would be interesting to very briefly describe the outcome of the Loveless case, even if it continued after Capehart's death.

• It looks like he may have named one of his sons after his law partner. That might suggest that the relationship was quite significant in Capehart's life? Is anything like that mentioned in reliable sources?

I think that's all I have. Once these issues are addressed, I may go through and copyedit lightly. I don't foresee any barriers to promotion to GA status. Good work! Larry Hockett (Talk) 03:58, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• Larry Hockett, thank you for another phenomenal and detailed review. I appreciate and value your guidance and feedback. I'm going to need some additional time today to research the outcome of the Loveless case and Capehart's connection with Arthur Froe. On a sidenote, I have started an article for Froe in my sandbox, and so far, I can only find that they were law partners together in Welch, so perhaps they had a close professional relationship and friendship. I hope to address this last bit on the Loveless case today. In the meantime, please let me know if you have any questions or additional suggestions in the meantime! -- West Virginian (talk) 13:28, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

• Actually, while it would be great to find out about some of these details, I'm not going to hold up the GA nomination for it. You and I both made good efforts to find information in a few areas - the relationship between Capehart and Froe, the severe provisions of the anti-lynching legislation, the significance of literary in literary education, and the outcome of the Loveless case - but the reality is that the surviving reliable sources from Capehart's era just don't leave us with as much detail as they would today in the digital age. Since the GA criteria are asking us for coverage of major aspects (rather than comprehensive coverage), I think we are fine.
• I did a little copyediting. I took out the specific phrasing of literary education (I don't see any source that describes this as a literature degree) and just left in his attendance at the school. I left in the assertion about about the severe provisions but it wouldn't be a sticking point for me either way. After the article is promoted, it should get more sets of eyes and maybe someone will come along to fill in the details of those provisions. To sum up, this is a GA pass. It meets the criteria for being well written and verifiable, as well as for being sufficiently broad, neutral, and stable. Images are PD and tagged appropriately. This is fine work, as usual. Larry Hockett (Talk) 06:13, 19 April 2021 (UTC)