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Talk:Virginia Christian

allegedly...

Why is Wikipedia calling her a criminal when we have no reliable sources that state she committed any crimes? Polygnotus (talk) 06:33, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I complained over at Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard#Alleged? Polygnotus (talk) 02:59, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Turns out she is not a "criminal" but an intellectually disabled and abused child who was not given a fair trial.

under Virginia law at the time, juveniles (defined as age 17 or younger) were not supposed to be incarcerated, let alone executed[1]

The case is the subject of a new historical novel, "Forsaken," by Ross Howell Jr. Howell will appear at the 11th Alabama Book Festival on Saturday alongside Alabama State University professor Derryn Moten, who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on Christian's trial and execution, to discuss the case.[2]

https://morbidology.com/the-execution-of-virginia-christian/ Not sure how reliable this one is.

Sixteen-year-old Virginia Christian worked as a washer woman in Hampton to help support her paralyzed mother. https://edu.lva.virginia.gov/200/stories/57

This fact is the backdrop for the historical novel "Forsaken" (New South Books/2016). The book tells the story of Christian through the lens of a young, idealist reporter Charles Mears. It's a tale woven with historical fact and fictional narrative that combines racial prejudice with hope and redemption. https://www.wunc.org/arts-culture/2016-02-05/forsaken-examines-the-story-of-virginia-christian

https://uncommonwealth.virginiamemory.com/blog/2010/09/14/virginia-christian-the-last-woman-executed-by-virginia/

https://uncommonwealth.virginiamemory.com/blog/2012/08/15/souls-of-the-departed-ida-v-belote/

A Gruesome Warning to Black Girls: The August 16, 1912 Execution of Virginia Christian by Derryn Eroll Moten - University of Iowa, 1997

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43308822

http://trials.erinbush.org/schedule-2/virginia-christian/

Polygnotus (talk) 03:39, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Polygnotus, I saw your note at the NPOVN and see that you've gathered a bunch of sources above. Forsaken: The Digital Bibliography, listed in the external links, has a lot of primary source material as well as what look like historical excerpts from Howell's book. Derryn Moten is now a professor at the Alabama State U.: https://www.alasu.edu/faculty/DerrynMoten.php (lists his email address, he might respond to a query, though we wouldn't be able to use an email response since it's non-verifiable; still, he might point to some text in his dissertation, which is wiki-published)
In addition to Moten, citation 4 also refers to: Streib, V., & Sametz, L. (1989). Executing female juveniles. Connecticut Law Review, 22, 3-16. (I haven't found an online copy, only an abstract here)
A couple of other possibilities:
  • “Christian Virginia vs. Virginia Christian,” Crisis 4 (September 1912): 237–39. (haven't been able to find a copy, but perhaps it will be among the primary materials you linked to)
  • Jones, L. E. (2018). “The most unprotected of all human beings”: Black Girls, State Violence, and the Limits of Protection in Jim Crow Virginia. Souls, 20(1), 14-37. (online copy)
FactOrOpinion (talk) 01:50, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@FactOrOpinion: Thank you! This article could use some work. Let's collaborate and improve it. It doesn't have to be perfect, but at least better than when I discovered it. I have not yet read (or even found) all the sources. Polygnotus (talk) 02:02, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Right now, I'm just going to investigate potential sources a bit more. You're right, that W.E.B. Du Bois quote came from the same edition of The Crisis that I mentioned. Thanks for the pdf! I also found a copy on the Internet Archive, but your pdf is easier to read.
A few other potential sources (some only minor info, but I figure I might as well keep track when I come across things):
  • Battle, Nishaun T. (2019). Black girlhood, punishment, and resistance: Reimagining justice for black girls in Virginia. Routledge.
  • Linders, Annulla, and Alana Van Gundy-Yoder. "Gall, gallantry, and the gallows: Capital punishment and the social construction of gender, 1840-1920." Gender & Society 22.3 (2008): 324-348. I don't have access to the paper, but this footnote, which might be the only relevant text, is accessible:

    In the event that the Black papers did comment on the execution of Black women, they sometimes provided a somewhat different reading of events than the white papers. This is particularly clear in the case of Virginia Christian, who was executed by Virginia in 1912. We have data from three different Black papers (the Chicago Defender, Cleveland Gazette, and Washington Bee), and all three raised objections to her execution, even if not always in terms of racial inequality. Rather, the most common objection among both Black and white advocates was based on the age and ignorance of the girl (she was 16 at the time of execution). One of the papers, however, made an overt link to racist practices: “The color of one's skin, alas, too frequently, either opens the door to liberty or closes it on freedom” (Washington Bee, August 3, 1912).

  • Hylton, Raymond Pierre, Rodney D. Waller, and Kimberly A. Matthews. Richmond's First African Baptist Church. Arcadia Publishing, 2023. (not really readable through Google Books, but the limited search info suggests that the focus is on people who sought clemency for Christian, pp. 73-75)
  • Green, William D. "Nellie Griswold Francis: The Vicissitudes of Activism for Women and Race." Minnesota History 67.3 (2020): 128-138. "Terrell enlisted Francis to join her in going to the office of Virginia governor William Hodges Mann to persuade him to stay the execution of a 17-year-old Black girl named Virginia Christian, convicted of murdering her abusive employer." (Terrell = Mollie Church Terrell, president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, Francis was president of the Minnesota Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs), also has a newspaper clipping from an unidentified paper saying that Terrell and Francis obtained a 2 week stay of execution from the governor.
  • Tepedino, Therese C. "The founding and early years of the National Association of Colored Women." (1977). "In 1912, a sixteen-year-old Negro girl killed her employer, a White woman in her fifties. Although there was some question as to the girl's mental stability and the degree of premeditation, she was condemned to death. Despite several stays of execution, she was executed. It was the feeling of many Negro as well as White citizens of Virginia that if a reformatory for Negro girls had existed, she would have been committed to the institution. The State Federation of Virginia, formed a few years earlier, had been diligently working toward the establishment of such an institution. After the execution, their dream was realized."
  • Shipman, Marlin (2002). The penalty is death: US newspaper coverage of women's executions. University of Missouri Press, pp. 19, 160-162 (was able to read some of these pages through Google Books, the focus is on press coverage, including differences between local and Chicago coverage, quoting some of the Chicago Defender, mentioned above)
FactOrOpinion (talk) 01:11, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent, thanks again! Google Books always hides those pages I need most. Polygnotus (talk) 01:48, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]


More sources
Title Text
The End of Public Execution Race, Religion, and Punishment in the American South In 1912, Virginia Christian fought with her employer, Ida Belote. Those working on Christian’s behalf characterized Belote as a very difficult employer and as the one who started the violence, throwing things at Christian and accusing her of theft until Christian retaliated by smashing her on the forehead with a broom handle. She ultimately gave this fight a grisly end by shoving a cloth down Belote’s throat.56 That Christian was defending herself from Belote was certainly the line of defense Christian wanted to provide in court. Her own attorneys kept Christian from testifying, however, concerned that her coarse ways of talking would alienate the jury more than her testimony would help. Christian was a sixteen-year-old, uneducated African American girl working as a domestic. She was tried and convicted (the jury took all of twenty-three minutes) and scheduled to die in the chair just five months later.

But there the story shifts from the norm. As with criminal cases later in the century (like the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930s or any number of cases in the civil rights era), several outside groups became interested in her case and attempted to intervene. Mary Church Terrell (an African American writer and activist) submitted to Virginia’s governor hundreds of signatures from members of the National Association of Colored Women asking him to reduce the punishment for Christian to a term in prison. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, formed just three years earlier, sent a representative to Hampton, sought lawyers to continue to press the case that her sentence should be commuted, and published their protest—“Christian Virginia vs. Virginia Christian”—in The Crisis. Her young age, possible mental disability (she was called “dull” by many reports), and the evidence that this was not a planned murder but rather a scuffle that turned deadly (perhaps even a fight started by Belote) were all factors these activists focused on.59 The NAACP called her “a sacrifice to society,” for white Virginia “made this girl what she was and then brutally killed her for it.”

More locally, one of the most vocal African Americans in Richmond, John Mitchell, editor of the Richmond Planet, was more circumspect. The Planet had no coverage of either the crime or the trial, with the first reference to the case appearing when an appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court was filed.61 This raised the possibility of an African American woman being heard in Virginia’s system of justice, which would be quite an unusual story for his readership. The paper’s first front page coverage announced her appeal to the governor. Two more front-page stories appeared at the time of her electrocution, both exceedingly brief.

The only really substantive engagement with the issues of capital punishment, her case, and her gender in Mitchell’s Planet arose in a brief report of the governor refusing to commute, accompanied by an equally brief editorial. Here Mitchell describes the “diabolical” crime of Christian against the “aged, frail” Belote, and voices how the choice over commutation was a “knotty question” facing the governor, and how Mitchell was “prepared to accept” the governor’s decision in this particular case. In Mitchell’s opinion, however, “in the case of a woman … we esteem it to be different” how one balances punishment and mercy than with men, making him conclude that mercy for Christian would have been the best path. The tone is so very accepting that it is hard to discern, even, that Mitchell believed another decision than death would be more just. The graphic nature of the crime made this a very difficult case for local African Americans to champion.

This condemned woman earned extensive attention from the local and national sources, and from the perspective of these activists, this was a case for mercy. No. The governor refused anything but a two-week stay of execution to allow for any new evidence to surface. As no evidence was forthcoming that might mitigate the case against her, he allowed the execution to proceed. Virginia Christian was electrocuted on 16 August 1912. She was the first woman in sixteen years to be executed in the South; she was also the first Black woman condemned to death in the South to receive extraordinary support from organized groups inside and outside the region in her defense, something that would become more commonplace in the coming generations.

But in this era, this was an exception. Almost all executions of women were of Black women, and they were not offered much protection due to their gender.

The Trunk Dripped Blood Five Sensational Murder Cases of The Early 20th Century For information on the Virginia Christian case, see L. Kay Gillespie, “Executed Women of the 20th and 21st Centuries” (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 2009), 44–45
Unceasing Militant The Life of Mary Church Terrell When she arrived at the NACW’s 1912 convention in Hampton, Virginia, for example, she helped to draw up a petition asking for clemency for sixteen-year-old Virginia Christian, who was awaiting execution for murdering her abusive white employer, Ida Belote. According to Christian’s account as reported in the press, she washed clothes for

Belote, a wealthy widowed mother of eight, who falsely accused her of stealing a piece of jewelry and threatened, “I’m going to put you in jail.” They argued until Belote threw a spittoon that hit Christian, and the two began to fight physically. Christian told a reporter, “I never meant to kill her. When I lef’ she was groanin’.” Some middle-class African Americans in Hampton distanced themselves from the poor and poorly educated black girl, but Terrell and the NACW came to her defense and rejected the use of the death penalty for the teenager. Terrell was chosen to chair a small contingent bringing a petition signed by three hundred NACW delegates to Virginia governor William Hodges Mann. The petition asked the governor to commute Christian’s sentence to life in prison, given the “extreme youth of this girl, the lack of training during her childhood, and the neglect for which she was not responsible [her mother was paralyzed and could not work to take care of her] are extenuating circumstances to show a merciful clemency to the unfortunate girl.” The governor listened to Terrell and granted the women a visit with Christian. He also granted the teen a ten-day stay of execution so that civil rights activists could find more exculpatory evidence but indicated that he had no intention of commuting her sentence. Upon returning to the convention, Terrell’s committee issued a pessimistic report. In a show of appreciation for their efforts, NACW member and businesswoman Madam C. J. Walker paid for their travel expenses. The NAACP hired investigators to help, and five hundred northern blacks and whites who opposed capital punishment wrote letters to the governor, but the death of a white woman could not go unpunished. Virginia Christian was electrocuted on August 16, 1912, the first African American teenage girl to be killed by the electric chair.

Virginia State Penitentiary A Notorious History This contains the whole story, in more detail than most other sources.
Womans legacy - essays on race, sex, and class in American history Likewise, Du Bois denounced the state of Virginia and questioned the Christianity of its citizens for permitting the execution of a sixteen-year-old Black youngster named Virginia Christian, charged with the murder of a woman for whom she was a servant.
Women and Capital Punishment in the United States - An Analytical History Contains basically the whole story
Women Shaping the South - Creating and Confronting Change The Virginia Christian case was a major story throughout 1912 in the Richmond Planet. For examples, see “Virginia Christian’s Appeal for Clemency,” Richmond Planet, July 13, 1912; “Another Just Decision,” Oct. 5, 1912, Richmond Planet.
On her own ground - The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker But what most aroused the delegates’ interest was a plea to help seventeen-year-old Virginia Christian, a young black washerwoman who awaited a mid-August electrocution in Richmond for murdering her white employer, a Mrs. Belote. Several weeks earlier, after Belote had accused her of stealing a skirt, the two women argued violently. When Christian continued to deny the theft, Belote attacked her with a heavy cuspidor. “In a blind rage” Christian retaliated, striking Belote across her forehead with a broken broomstick and “felling her instantly.” To stop Belote’s screams, Christian “thrust a towel down her throat,” then walked off with jewelry and money from Belote’s purse. Christian certainly was no model of virtue. And the NACW had admitted as much, calling her an “irresponsible being.” Nevertheless, they abhorred the death penalty for a minor and hoped to have her declared mentally incompetent in order to commute her sentence to life imprisonment. Mary Church Terrell, the founding president of the NACW, was appointed as head of a special committee charged with visiting Virginia governor William Hodges Mann. At dawn that Thursday she traveled to Richmond with a petition requesting leniency. “Owing to all the circumstances of the case we feel that the electrocution of this young girl would be repugnant to the Christian womanhood and manhood not only of the United States but of the whole civilized world,” read the NACW appeal. At 10 A.M. Terrell presented the document to the governor and made her plea. But while he granted Terrell permission to visit Christian in jail, he declined to “show clemency on account of age for Virginia Christian.” Late that afternoon, as Terrell returned to Hampton, she delivered the disappointing news to her colleagues. In the evening, as Madam Walker was formally introduced to the group, she opened her remarks with the announcement of her donation to cover all travel costs for Terrell and the two other committee members who had ventured to Richmond. ---- By 1910, four NACW members—including one past and two future presidents—had become part of the NAACP’s leadership: Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells-Barnett on its executive committee, and Mary Burnett Talbert and Elizabeth Carter on its general committee. In fact, Wells-Barnett and Frances Blascoer, the NAACP’s first executive secretary, made a presentation at the NACW’s Louisville convention in 1910, though the brilliant Wells-Barnett had been excluded from some early NACW activities because of her uncompromising, often argumentative personality. Members of both groups cooperated at the Hampton biennial in 1912 in their efforts to commute the sentence of Virginia Christian, the teenaged laundress who had killed her employer.
  • The End of Public Execution Race, Religion, and Punishment in the American South was written by Michael Ayers Trotti, professor of history at Ithaca College. I think we can use it for the claim that the jury took all of twenty-three minutes to decide that she was guilty.
  • Unceasing Militant - The Life of Mary Church Terrell was written by Alison M. Parker, chair of the history department at the university of Delaware. We can use that source for these claims:
  • Terrell was chosen to chair a small contingent bringing a petition signed by three hundred NACW delegates to Virginia governor William Hodges Mann.
  • The governor listened to Terrell and granted the women a visit with Christian. He also granted the teen a ten-day stay of execution so that civil rights activists could find more exculpatory evidence but indicated that he had no intention of commuting her sentence. Upon returning to the convention, Terrell’s committee issued a pessimistic report. In a show of appreciation for their efforts, NACW member and businesswoman Madam C. J. Walker paid for their travel expenses. The NAACP hired investigators to help, and five hundred northern blacks and whites who opposed capital punishment wrote letters to the governor, but the death of a white woman could not go unpunished.
  • "The “Commonwealth of Virginia vs. Virginia Christian”: Southern Black Women, Crime & Punishment in Progressive Era Virginia" was written by LaShawn Harris who is an Associate Professor of History at Michigan State University. I would consider her a biased source. Quote: Her response to racialized violence was a spontaneous yet conscious act of self-preservation and survival and arguably a direct challenge to race oppression, labor exploitation, and white brutality. Christian’s act of self-defense, like many African Americans responding to white violence during the era of Jim Crow segregation, was firmly anchored in African Americans’ individual and collective expressions of self-protection. So I think we can use it for facts, but her opinions would have to be attributed if they are mentioned.
  • the claim that the NACW and the NAACP co-operated.
  • In the evening, as Madam Walker was formally introduced to the group, she opened her remarks with the announcement of her donation to cover all travel costs for Terrell and the two other committee members who had ventured to Richmond.

This is also supported by Beauty Shop Politics - African American Womens Activism in the Beauty Industry which says that Madam C. J. Walker offered to pay for "the travel costs of Mary Church Terrell and two other women to travel to Richmond, Virginia, and appeal to the governor on behalf of Virginia Christian, a seventeen-year-old washerwoman who was set to be executed for killing her white employer."

Polygnotus (talk) 02:12, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

W.E.B. DuBois wrote: Virginia Christian was a product of Virginia far more than of the colored race. It was the social organization of white Virginia that made this girl what she was and then brutally killed for it. The State pushed her down into poverty despite the hard-earned pennies of her father; the State refused to educate her or even to let Northern philanthropy do it; the State put her as a servant, body and soul, into the hands of her mistress and constituted that mistress judge and jury over this ignorant, wayward child. At the age of sixteen … this child was convicted of murder, when there is not a white man in the nation who after impartial review of the facts would not have to admit that every circumstance shows lack of premeditation with a strong case of self-defense. Make this child as brutal, immoral and irresponsible as you will and the black fact remains that a civilized community made her and then murdered her for being herself. And that community was Christian Virginia! I think that this quote comes from The Crisis 4 you mention above. Polygnotus (talk) 02:25, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/civil-rights/crisis/0900-crisis-v04n05-w023.pdf page 236 bottom right. Polygnotus (talk) 02:40, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Polygnotus: It looks like you've done a lot of digging for historical sources. I know you asked me for help earlier. Is it due to not feeling like there's an easy way to incorporate them? A second set of eyes? In general, plenty of articles can be rewritten without people objecting. I think it's worth a chance to try going ahead and being bold. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 18:40, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Clovermoss: Thank you! I am certainly not afraid of people objecting, and I doubt they will, but I just really really suck at writing. I am pretty decent at finding sources and excellent at gnoming, but writing is not one of my talents. Collecting sources on the talkpage helps me, and anyone who wants to join me, find the best ones and decide which sources can be used for which claims. Incorporating information from sources into articles is not my strong suit. Currently one of the refs literally says Corroborated by Virginia Christian's own sisters, and descendants. Retrieved 2024-05-02. I currently have another 10 or so sources I want to dig through. When I discovered it this article was so bad that it annoyed me. I believe that, to increase the overall quality of the encyclopedia, we need to work on its weak points. Polygnotus (talk) 19:40, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Time and space

@Space4Time3Continuum2x: In response to this edit, Virginia Christian is mentioned on page 76 (page 77 of the PDF version). Polygnotus (talk) 22:07, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Polygnotus. I searched for the name but must have overlooked her mention. I changed the infobox template to "person". Will look at other material in the next few days. Space4TCatHerder🖖 22:25, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sources disagreeing on biographical details

Polygnotus, according to Baker, Black Female Executions in Historical Context (2008), Virginia was mentally disabled, one of eight children of a sharecropper on Belote's farm. According to Lindsey Jones, The most unprotected of all human beings”: Black Girls, State Violence, and the Limits of Protection in Jim Crow Virginia (2018), she was the third child of six, her father was a fisherman, and her mother had worked for the Belotes before becoming paralyzed. Both documents say that she was working for Ida Belote as a laundress. Baker's source is an article: Streib, V., & Sametz, L. (1989). Executing female juveniles. Connecticut Law Review, 22, 3-16. Jones's source is a dissertation: Derryn Eroll Moten, “‘A Gruesome Warning to Black Girls’: The August 16, 1912, Execution of Virginia Christian” (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1997), 39, 203. I don't have access to either one. Your table says that "Virginia State Penitentiary: A Notorious History" contains the whole story, in more detail than most other sources. Does it mention her family or her being mentally disabled? Space4TCatHerder🖖 19:42, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I replied by email. Polygnotus (talk) 04:36, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The relevant paragraph of Streib, V., & Sametz, L. (1989) is entirely sourced to The Crisis:

The last female juvenile executed was Virginia Christian. She was born on August 15, 1895, to poor black parents living in Hampton, Virginia. Christian's mother, who had a widely-known reputation for dishonesty, became paralyzed in 1909 when Christian was only thirteen years old. Christian's father was a hardworking laborer, but his wages of $1.25 per day were not enough to support his invalid wife and eight children. Therefore, the older children, including Christian, had to quit school and work to support the family. It was generally agreed that their home and family life remained squalid and miserable and that Christian adopted her mother's habits of immorality, dishon-esty, and thievery. Compounding this was Christian's "dubious mental responsibility."

The Crisis talks about Christian's "utter ignorance" in confessing without a lawyer, and her generally dismal situation, but I don't see an unambiguous claim that she was disabled. I'll take a look at Polygnotus' email tomorrow. In any case, I wouldn't use this specific source for that claim. Ghosts of Europa (talk) 09:02, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If I remember correctly one of the sources says she was called "dull" at the time, and a later source used "retarded" which I changed to "intellectually disabled" for obvious reasons. Polygnotus (talk) 11:02, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Baker (2016) explicitly calls her "mentally retarded", but his source is Streib, V., & Sametz, L. (1989) page 25, which is just the paragraph above, cited to The Crisis. Am I missing something in The Crisis that makes this more explicit?
FYI, if you want to check out Streib, V., & Sametz, L. (1989), it's available through HeinOnline via The Wikipedia Library. Ghosts of Europa (talk) 19:15, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

More

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/171642357/virginia-christian

https://www.virginiamemory.com/online-exhibitions/items/show/1067

https://www.virginiamemory.com/online-exhibitions/items/show/892

https://www.virginiamemory.com/online-exhibitions/exhibits/show/forsaken/chapter1

However, Governor Mann granted a second respite on 18 July, one day before the rescheduled execution, in order for Christian to see her spiritual advisors. Governor Mann granted a third respite on 26 July, the Newport News Daily Press reported, after meeting with a committee from the National Federation of Colored Women.

Polygnotus (talk) 06:47, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is David Baker reliable?

David Baker has twice described Virginia Christian as "mentally retarded".

  • Page 76 of the article Black Female Executions in Historical Context (Baker 2008), cited to Streib, V., & Sametz, L. (1989).
  • Pages 172–173 of the book Women and Capital Punishment in the United States: An Analytical History (Baker 2016), also cited to Streib, V., & Sametz, L. (1989).

In Baker (2016), he also includes a direct quote ostensibly from Streib & Sametz:

In contrast, Ida Belote was an older white woman and one of the town’s “white aristocracy by way of her father’s prominence as the owner of a large grocery.”62

He cites that quote to page 25 of Streib & Sametz, but the quote doesn't appear there at all. Streib & Sametz never mention a grocery. Here's a link to Streib & Sametz; you can sign in via The Wikipedia Library: https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/conlr22&div=9&id=&page=

Reposting from above, the relevant paragraph of Streib & Sametz relating to Christian's mental state:

The last female juvenile executed was Virginia Christian. She was born on August 15, 1895, to poor black parents living in Hampton, Virginia. Christian's mother, who had a widely-known reputation for dishonesty, became paralyzed in 1909 when Christian was only thirteen years old. Christian's father was a hardworking laborer, but his wages of $1.25 per day were not enough to support his invalid wife and eight children. Therefore, the older children, including Christian, had to quit school and work to support the family. It was generally agreed that their home and family life remained squalid and miserable and that Christian adopted her mother's habits of immorality, dishon-esty, and thievery. Compounding this was Christian's "dubious mental responsibility."

"Dubious mental responsibility" in turn is sourced to the article in The Crisis.

It seems like a stretch for Baker to turn "dubious mental responsibility" into "mentally retarded", and the fact that he apparently mis-cites Streib & Sametz in a different context makes me trust his interpretation even less. I don't think we should cite Baker to affirmatively say Christian was disabled. Ghosts of Europa (talk) 20:57, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ref 19-

Page number is missing from ref 19? scope_creepTalk 06:38, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Scope creep: It appears to be a website: Curnutt 2016. Or am I missing something? Polygnotus (talk) 05:11, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Morning @Polygnotus: It is ref 20. Somebody has already fixed it. Bundles ref.p=186. It must have been fixed in the interim. scope_creepTalk 05:31, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Life on this planet is very confusing. Thank you! Polygnotus (talk) 05:32, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Quelle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Virginia_Christian