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Source

Carl Sandburg

Wikipedia contributors Wikipedia / Wikimedia Foundation 2026 Tier 3 Pointer source Accessed 2026-05-02 View source ↗

Citation

Carl Sandburg. Wikipedia. Re-fetched 2026-05-02 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sandburg.

Tier justification

Tier 3: Wikipedia is pointer-only per CREDIBILITY.md. Recorded here for the specific 1967 death date and the Steichen biographical-relation claim that anchor Sandburg’s place in the Family of Man story. verified: true indicates the page was fetched this session and the verbatim quotes below are confirmed; tier: 3 records that the source itself is pointer-only.

Relevance

Sandburg wrote the prologue for The Family of Man (1955) — distributed in full as a leaflet at the MoMA opening per src-moma-1955-press-release-book — and was Steichen’s brother-in-law through Steichen’s sister Lilian Steichen. Sandburg’s 1967 death is one of the bookending moments of the post-FoM 1960s: it removes the show’s prologue author seven years before Steichen’s own 1973 death, and at a time when the show itself was deep into its Cold War world tour (Bitter Years and FoM were both in their respective post-MoMA international tours). This pointer entry captures the death-date and the family-relation claim verbatim from Wikipedia so that future passes can promote them to Tier 1 / Tier 2 against the NYT obituary or Niven 1997.

Key excerpts / pages

Verbatim from the article (fetched 2026-05-02):

  • Sandburg “died of natural causes in 1967 and his body was cremated.” Date: 22 July 1967, in Flat Rock, North Carolina.
  • Sandburg “met Lilian Steichen (1883–1977), sister of photographer Edward Steichen” and they married in 1908.
  • The Family of Man (1955) listed in his bibliography as: “The Family of Man (1955) (exhibition catalog) (introduction; images compiled by Edward Steichen)” — Wikipedia’s bibliography uses “introduction” rather than “prologue”; the FoM primary record (src-moma-1955-press-release-book) describes Sandburg’s contribution as the prologue distributed as a leaflet at the opening, and src-moma-1955-catalog reproduces it.

Notes

  • The “introduction” vs “prologue” terminology difference between Wikipedia and the MoMA primary record is a minor wording divergence; both refer to the same Sandburg text. The MoMA primary terminology (src-moma-1955-press-release-book) is the authoritative one.
  • Cross-references: src-moma-1955-press-release-book, src-moma-1955-catalog, src-nyt-1967-sandburg-obit (NOT yet in repo; future Tier-1/2 anchor for the 1967 death and the Family-of-Man-prologue framing).
  • Per CREDIBILITY.md Wikipedia is treated as a pointer source — the 1967 death date and the Lilian-Steichen marriage claim should be promoted to Tier 1 / Tier 2 against the NYT obituary or Niven 1997 (the canonical Steichen biography) before being cited as authoritative.
  • The Niven 1997 entry exists in the repo as src-niven-1997 but has not been opened for the Sandburg-relation claim in this session.
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