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@JOCOHistorian Please explain why a source that appears to be reliable is not. If there is a dispute about the veracity of this incident, you may mention that in the article so long as there are other reliable sources that report on the matter. Otherwise, removing cited material based on your personal opinion is unconstructive. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 21:29, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While the source appears to be reliable, if you will read the source, you will see that the only source of evidence for the claim that someone was hanged at the high school was not corroborated by proper research. The claim was made by one singular community member and not supported by research into a variety of news publications from the time. Additionally, the researcher failed to provide other interviews that would have corroborated the one interviewee.
In fact, if you will read later into the entry that I edited, you will see reference to a teacher who has been teaching there for 64 years. She is very well known in the area and most definitely would have been present at the time such an incident would have occurred, but there was no evidence that the researcher attempted to contact her or to find anyone to affirm the truth of the story or provide more specific details.
As it is, the interviewee could have claimed that the aliens had landed at the high school gymnasium, and the researcher, due to lazy research, would have presented it as fact. Unfortunately, the testimony of one singular individual is not strong enough to support adding that information to the public information for a high school, particularly when that information is incendiary and highly controversial.
From a social-emotional perspective, the young people and students who attend the school may be emotionally damaged by spurious information and unreliable research. Potential misinformation of this nature may be destructive to the culture of the school and the communities, causing unnecessary racial tension and fear mongering. Students deserve to go to school in a positive environment not overshadowed by the detrimental impacts of this unsubstantiated claim.
Please allow the edit. I am not at all opposed to truthful, well-researched historical information, even if it is not pleasant, but this information is based on poor research that is speculative and proved only by one interviewee's hearsay. JOCOHistorian (talk) 01:32, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Additionally, this source is an undergrad honors college thesis written by someone who had not even obtained a bachelor's degree, not a public, peer-reviewed scholarly source. It is not reliable. JOCOHistorian (talk) 01:43, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I get what you mean and understand where you're coming from. Employing your same logic, I could argue that the one recorded witness testifies to the fact that wider mention of this incident has been deliberately suppressed. (I'm not actually saying that, by the way; I'm speaking hypothetically.)
The fact remains that somebody did go on the record about what they recalled. We can speculate as to why and personally doubt their word, but we are bound by what the source says. It would be different if their testimony was published in a blog, personal website, social media, or some other site that would unacceptable according to WP:UGC. However, this interview is included in a thesis that was peer-reviewed (at least if I read the list of professors under the title "Approved by:" on page iii right). This qualifies as a reliable source and cannot be removed unless it is indisputably proven false by another, similar reliable source.
Perhaps there are articles testifying that this incident is disputed. If so, that dispute can be mentioned too, provided it is cited from reliable sources.
As for the "social-emotional perspective" argument, please read WP:NOTCENSORED.
Before that, however, I will do some digging into local historical archives for corroborating articles and do some interviews of my own with white and black community members to corroborate or insubstantiate the information in this undergraduate thesis. Who knows, perhaps I can come up with my own publishable article detailing the events or lack thereof referenced in this entry.
I do not consider professor approval of an undergraduate thesis to be the same as a peer review: the expectations for scholarship for an undergrad would definitely not be as high as for a doctoral student.
Also, I am not suggesting censorship of the truth, but I do not think that one person's storytelling can be counted as the truth. It would have been much better if the researcher had acknowledged the flaws in the research methodology. For example, the research would have been more credible if the researcher had acknowledged that one interview is not enough or suggested that the one interview, whether truthful or not, implies a general community feeling about the school in that time period. Such discussion would have added a level of sophistication to the research and prevented hearsay from being added to this wikipedia entry. Instead, it was presented as fact, which indicates flawed research.
