Talk:Wiley Griffon

This review is transcluded from Talk:Wiley Griffon/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: TechnoSquirrel69 (talk · contribs) 06:00, 30 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: MCE89 (talk · contribs) 12:58, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

Will review this — I'll aim to add my comments within the next day or so. MCE89 (talk) 12:58, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Happy new year, MCE89! Looking forward to it. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 16:21, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Happy new year to you too! Have added all my comments below. Thanks for writing this, it was a really interesting article and a nice piece of work. Just a couple of optional suggestions on prose and one source query, otherwise all looks good. MCE89 (talk) 02:03, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comments, MCE89! Responses below. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 04:41, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good! Passing this now :) MCE89 (talk) 02:46, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Images: Infobox image has an appropriate NFUR, and is compliant with the NFCC (I'll assume you couldn't locate any images with a confirmed publication date that would make them PD?). The map is a nice addition and is also free
• Copyright: No copyright issues apparent on Earwig. Will do further checks for close paraphrasing as part of my source spot checks

• A handful of small suggestions on prose — none of these are essential to meeting the GA criteria on their own, so feel free to disregard or push back on any that you don't see as an improvement:
  • According to The Oregon Daily Journal, he was employed by Henry W. Holden, a Texan businessman, at age 19 — I'd suggest adding something like According to his obituary in The Oregon Daily Journal to make clearer that this was a 1913 report rather than the result of modern research

     Done, along with the other fix below. —TS

  • Griffon lived in a house along the Mill Race, the first Black property owner on record in Eugene - I’d suggest changing the structure of the sentence to something like ...along the Mill Race, and was the first Black property owner... to make this easier to parse. I initially read the second clause of this sentence as referencing a person called "Mill Race"

     Done —TS

  • as a waiter at a restaurant and in the railway, and others in Eugene and elsewhere in Oregon - I'd suggest changing this to and in other roles in Eugene and elsewhere in Oregon to make it read a little more smoothly. You could also consider mentioning that he worked as a hotel porter and for a logging company, since that is referenced in a few of your sources

     Done. I'm trying not to add too much bloat to this sentence, although I've added a detail about one that's already there. —TS

  • The owners of the Elks Club, where he had been employed at the time of his death, hired a caretaker for him - This feels a bit premature, as you don’t tell the reader that he died from this illness until the following sentence. Perhaps "where he was employed at the time"?

    It was indeed originally after that sentence;  done —TS

• You could consider adding a sentence or so to give some context on Oregon's black exclusion laws and how they functioned during Griffon's era. The fact that he moved to the state despite these laws is interesting — is there anything more that could be said about how he did so or about the historical context in Oregon at the time?

  I've rephrased here a little and cited another source, Keeper 2013, which goes into more detail about the legal situation in Oregon for free Black people at the time. None of the sources say much more than that; there isn't much, really — it seems the law was not well enforced and didn't appear to have much of an impact on Griffon's life, at least from a historial perspective. —TS

• No concerns regarding source reliability. Sources are largely local news outlets, and the contemporaneous sources are used appropriately and attributed in-text where needed. Ref formatting and layout meets GA criteria.
• A brief search for additional sources didn't turn up any obvious gaps in the breadth of coverage.

This table checks 8 passages from throughout the article (24.2% of 33 total passages). These passages contain 8 inline citations (24.2% of 33 in the article). Generated with the Veracity user script. MCE89 (talk) 02:03, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Reference #	Letter	Source	Archive	Status	Notes
According to The Oregon Daily Journal, he was employed by Henry W. Holden, a Texan businessman, at age 19.
4	a	The Oregon Daily Journal 1913, p. 10.			I might just be missing it, but I don't think I see "at age 19" anywhere in the source? Good catch; cited the wrong source here.  Fixed —TS
Although he resigned from the railway after three years, in July 1894,
7		Daily Eugene Guard 1894b, p. 4.
Griffon lived in a house along the Mill Race, the first Black property owner on record in Eugene.
10		Hill 2019; O'Neal & Bigalke 2018.
He sustained various injuries while engaged in manual labor.
12		Daily Eugene Guard 1894a, p. 6; The Eugene Daily Guard 1907, p. 6; Morning Register 1904, p. 6.
however, the historian Jennifer O'Neal found that "evidence suggests he weathered those times positively" and held a favorable reputation.
1	c	O'Neal & Bigalke 2018.
Several public displays dedicated to Griffon have been installed in Eugene. To highlight the history of public transportation in Eugene, the Lane Transit District installed an exhibit in Eugene Station for its first anniversary in 1999, including a display on Griffon.
2	c	Maben 1999, p. 1C.
In 2017, the EWEB partnered with the local NAACP branch to construct a sign about Griffon at its headquarters,
20		Caltabiano 2017.
Scott Maben of The Register-Guard wrote that Griffon was born in the state of Illinois, possibly to a slave family.
2	b	Maben 1999, p. 1C.