User talk:Knollll

Hi Knollll! I noticed your contributions and wanted to welcome you to the Wikipedia community. I hope you like it here and decide to stay.

As you get started, you may find this short tutorial helpful:

Learn more about editing

Alternatively, the contributing to Wikipedia page covers the same topics.

If you have any questions, we have a friendly space where experienced editors can help you here:

Get help at the Teahouse

If you are not sure where to help out, you can find a task here:

Volunteer at the Task Center

Happy editing! ✗plicit 13:04, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

The Riverview Section of Waterloo, Iowa is a Geographical name. Impossible for that to be "original research".

https://experiencewaterloo.com/listings/riverview-recreation-area/

You mentioned in the edit summary that the information is taken from personal experiences, so that would be considered original reasearch Knollll (talk) 08:50, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Uhhh, yeah -- the Edit Summary is not part of the Wikipedia encyclopedia page. My personal knowledge of The area was put in the summary to help people understand that I am familiar with the Perkins family and the area where they grew up. I spoke with Don's brother Claude around 1994 with my High School age son in tow, to help my son understand that - although racism exists - Iowa never put up with it (as a State) and that Waterloo (as a City) never put up with it. My son was attending the very same West High School that Don graduated from. My son took the class :African American History at West High School. I sat in (as a parent guest) on one of those classes, taught by Orlando 'Ray' Dial because my son kept coming home and telling me about the false (racist) information that Ray dial was teaching (e.g. Jim Crow was "nation-wide", etc). I sat in and, WHILE DON PERKINS' senior portrait hung on the wall out in the hallway, with a tagline of "Student Body President Don Perkins - 1956", I had to listen to Ray Dial tell all the Black students in that class that -- if it hadn't been for Brown vs Board of Education, in 1954, he told them that NONE of them would be in the "White" school (West High School) -- which of course is absolute nonsense. In Waterloo (and in Iowa) the schools have NEVER been segregated. Black or White - from 1857 on - the student went to the same school as everyone else in your neighborhood. If you were White or Black, if you lived on the west side of the river, you went to West High School. And, if you were White or Black and you lived on the east side of the river, you went to East High School. No distiction, no segregation EVER took place in Waterloo, and also never in Iowa. Twice in the early decades of Iowa, racist white people migrated up from the South. Twice in the early decades of Iowa, those racist Southerners tried to plaster their racism onto and into Iowa culture. And twice - both those times - Iowans shut them down. Iowa's very first Iowa Supreme Court case (the very first, way back in the 1850's) decided the case if "Rafe" (Ralph), a slave who came to Iowa with his Southern master's permission. When time came for him to return, he stayed in Iowa. The slave owner sent slave hunters after him. They caught Rafe, BUT when Iowan's heard that slave catchers were carrying Rafe away, they caught up to them and freed Rafe. The slave owner sued then in the Iowa courts to get his "property" back. The case went all the way to the Iowa Supreme Court, which shut that slave owner down. Paraphrase of their ruling, 'In Iowa, Rafe is not a slave -- precisely because Iowa does not allow slavery. So Rafe is a free man here in Iowa, and you cannot take him'.

Black or White never 'selected' what school you attended EVER in Iowa. All children, since 1857, attended whichever school was closest to their home. Black kids always - since 1857 - attended the SAME schools as white kids. Nowadays, Hollywood movies, and TV shows show America as if the SOUTHERN racism, and the SOUTHERN Jim Crow -- as if it was all across America. But it wasn't. I have to listen to stories about how "back in the day" Black people weren't allowed to go to College (I heard that one in a supposed "documentary" on Tuskeege and HBCUs - but yet I know that is not true. Right here in Iowa, at Iowa State University, exist one of the University building known as Carver Hall. I went to ISU for one semester, and I had to listen to the Black students (college students) being taught that "back in the day" they wouldn't have been able to attend college with the White kids -- all the while that they walk past Carver Hall, on campus, every school day. Carver Hall is so named because George Washington Carver (!! "back in the day" !!) attended Iowa State University, and received first, his Bachelors Degree, and then his Masters Degree -- and then he taught !! As A Professor !! at ISU.

-- So, the source here is Mickey Spagnola - a sports columnist for Dallas - who is not an Iowan, has never lived in Iowa, is not a Historian - he's a SPORTS columnist. He says that Don Perkins told him that he (Perkins) lived in a poor part of town. Somehow, Spagnoli - without justification - rephrases that as Perkins lived in the "segregated" part of town --> 'cuz, ya know, segregation was EVERYWHERE! <-- NOT! That is not true.

-- Here is how Spagnola (the SPORTS columnist) wrote it:

-- “His career start to football was quite coincidental. Remember, he was going to high school in the mid-1950s. Segregation was a way of life in many states. Perkins grew up in a segregated part of Waterloo, a "poor part of town," as he says. As he tells the story, when back then, "I was one of the few Black people, black Americans, Negroes, that went to high school."

-- “But he could play sports – all-state halfback in football, captain of the track team, played basketball – "so they wanted to keep me in high school, and they found me jobs to keep me interested in school while staying in the poor part of town."

-- “There had to be something more about Perkins, too. His senior year in high school he was voted student body president, a rare honor for a Black student in a barely integrated school.

Here, Spagnola is painting the SOUTHERN "segregation" and Jim Crow onto Waterloo, and by extension onto Iowa. But Iowa NEVER had segregated schools - EVER. And Iowa never had "separate drinking fountains", and Iowa never had Black people do anything special on City Buses (Iowa Blacks NEVER had to "ride in the back").

So, with all that said, what is the best way to make this Wikipedia article more truthful? Spagnola may be qualified to write about Don Perkins as a football player, but Spagnola has no qualification to write that Perkins lived in a "segregated" part of town (especially because no such place ever existed). By Spagnola's own writing, Perkins said that he lived in a poor part of town. Spagnola transforms that into something that NEVER existed in Waterloo - a "segregated" part of town. Spagnola falsely claims that segregation was everywhere. It was not. Spagnola made this up out of his own head. And because Waterloo schools (and ALL Iowa schools) were NEVER segregated, Spagnola is confused when he writes "a barely integrated school". That is a false statement because Iowa schools (including Waterloo) have ALWAYS been 100% integrated. The students - no matter their color - always went to the school closest to their home.

I have no desire to be disruptive. I want to work together. What is the best way to do what I am trying to do (which is to excise the "racist trope" false characterization that is in the page because Spagnola, a SPORTS writer assumed that segregation was nationwide, so he falsely colored Perkins' "poor part of town" in "segregated part of town"? Spagnola may be a reliable source for Sports, but he definitely is not a reliable source for Waterloo, Iowa school system.

Help me out? My ears are open.

Joe Hepperle 63.152.7.8 (talk) 05:56, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

First I want to clear some things up. From what i have found, while Waterloo was never legally segregated like you are mentioning, it seems to have been very socially segregated. So while everyone went to the school closest to them and had access to the same legal rights, according to this article i found, that references a study from 1967 https://web.archive.org/web/20180619063554/https://wcfcourier.com/news/top_story/waterloo-race-relations-still-an-issue-years-after-city-report/article_42d89ae7-9c4e-5048-9877-ad949bbfc893.html "In 1967, housing for 99.85 percent of blacks was relegated to the east side" and "Almost 80 percent of public school students attended schools more than 80 percent white or 80 percent black." Because of this i still think that segregated is not a wrong word to use in that context. However I do agree that Spagnola is not the most reliable source to use. If you see it necessary you can feel free to find a better source for the article. However all your previous edits to the article all contained information that you provided yourself. While it may be accurate and in good faith, Wikipedia does not allow original research in its articles. Hope to hear from you soon! Knollll (talk) 12:57, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

A short correction that is is not really necessary but I felt the need to add: I mentioned exemption 7 to the three revert rule in an edit summary in response to you mentioning the rule in the previous edit. However exemption 7 would not apply as it only applies to the biographies of living people. However this is not relevant as I only ever made three reverts to the page, not breaking the rule. Knollll (talk) 13:46, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

@63.152.7.8 I am wondering if you have seen my replies to your message. Hope to hear from you Knollll (talk) 10:13, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Hi Knollll! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission. I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.

• The Wikipedia Adventure Start Page
• The Wikipedia Adventure Lounge
• The Teahouse new editor help space
• Wikipedia Help pages

Mission 1	Mission 2	Mission 3	Mission 4	Mission 5	Mission 6	Mission 7
Say Hello to the World	An Invitation to Earth	Small Changes, Big Impact	The Neutral Point of View	The Veil of Verifiability	The Civility Code	Looking Good Together

-- 07:41, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Talk:2025_Albanian_parliamentary_election#PL --95.24.81.39 (talk) 09:28, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Just to let you know, I've reverted your revert of an IP at Greensburg, Kansas; the IP was correct that it did lift and produce another tornado. ^EF⁵ 12:16, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Ok, I'll try to avoid making such mistakes again Knollll (talk) 22:47, 23 May 2025 (UTC)