SocietySloth

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Hello, SocietySloth, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:13, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Black land loss in the United States

Hi! I just wanted to say that I'm glad to see that you're editing this article - it was started by another Wiki Education student last year and as there's doubtlessly things that happened during the past year, it's good to see someone looking to update it. Nice pick! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:33, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Notes

Hi! Here are my notes:

• When citing large sources like books, always make sure that you cite the specific page numbers where you found the information, as this makes it easier for others to verify the claims.

• Avoid using phrases like "it is important to note" since that's seen as subjective to the reader, as it asks the question "who sees this as important to note?". I've edited this to remove this issue.

• The section on the causes of black land loss needs a little work. The main things are that the section feels a little jumbled - you start by discussing the passing down of land and finish with stating that part of the issue was the lack of paperwork like birth certificates. The time period is a little unclear and I'm not sure if the birth certificates would or should be included in the initial part about paperwork. There's also a bit of an issue with run-on sentences. I've done a little tinkering/rearranging and here's what I've come up with:

Common issues causing land loss amongst freed slaves and their descendants were caused by a lack of necessary paperwork and documents. The lack of or inability to produce these items resulted in unequal access to programs and services that would have assisted them with both obtaining land and ensuring that it remained within the family. Many newly freed slaves lacked necessary documents such as birth certificates that would prove their identity. They were able to obtain citizenship documentation after being freed, as they were required to register for citizenship. This documentation was not seen as proof of identity, however, and many freed slaves were given the same last names as their owners.

Another issue was that many freed slaves and their earlier descendants did not write wills that would correctly pass down landownership, resulting in the proper titles not getting passed down. If land was not explicitly passed down to a certain person or group of people, the property would go to all of the next heirs, who would have the ability to sell their piece of land without informing the others.

You can absolutely use any or all of this if you like, as this is all your work - just shifted around a little.

• In general, make sure that your tone is more encyclopedic and avoids being too much of an essay. This seems to be a bit of an issue in other portions of the article, so I'd use the writing sample above, as well as the writing style by the other student as kind of a guide here. It's not a huge huge issue, but you want to avoid this coming across as an essay or written by a singular person.

• Don't include links to outside websites in the article and tell people to go elsewhere for more information. This is kind of verboten on Wikipedia since it can be seen as promotional and is generally seen as not fitting in with Wikipedia's writing style.

• Some of the later portions of the article are undersourced, specifically the portion about the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, which lacks sourcing as a whole. This needs sourcing to show where this is a notable organization to highlight in the article.

I hope that this helps! You've done a lot of work so far and I like what you've added - it just needs to be tweaked and edited a bit more to better fit the guidelines. Again, I'm really happy that you chose this article since this is an important and ongoing issue in the United States that needed to be further expanded and covered. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:55, 21 November 2018 (UTC)