| Date | May 2017 | Marks available | 9 | Reference code | 17M.1.BP.TZ0.16 |
| Level | Both SL and HL | Paper | Paper 1 - first exams 2017 | Time zone | TZ0 |
| Command term | Evaluate | Question number | 16 | Adapted from | N/A |
Question
The sources and questions relate to Case Study 1: Civil rights movement in the United States (1954– 1965) – Nature and characteristics of discrimination: Segregation and education; Brown versus Board of Education decision (1954).
Source P
Michael Klarman, a professor of history, writing about the effect of the Supreme Court’s 1955 judgment, Brown II, in the academic book Brown v Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement (2007). In Brown II, the Supreme Court decided on “gradualism”, that is, the gradual application of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v Board of Education (1954) to end school segregation.
Brown II was a clear victory for white southerners … The Court approved gradualism, imposed no deadlines for beginning or completing desegregation, issued vague guidelines, and entrusted the final decision to local judges. When informed of the decision, Florida legislators [law-makers] broke into cheers … A Mississippi politician celebrated the fact that a local Mississippi judge would decide when desegregation would be feasible [practical]. Southern law-makers commented that desegregation might be feasible in another fifty or one hundred years.
Black leaders were disappointed with the decision … A black journalist, John H. McCray, admitted that he “can’t find too much to cheer about”, and he criticized the Supreme Court for “seeking to do business” with diehard [determined] southern segregationists.
The sources and questions relate to Case Study 1: Civil rights movement in the United States (1954– 1965) – Nature and characteristics of discrimination: Segregation and education; Brown versus Board of Education decision (1954).
Source N
Photograph of protesters at a pro-segregation rally in Baltimore, 1954. The posters at the front of the photograph read: “We want our rights”; “We can’t fight alone. Join us now!”; “We can’t fight alone”.
The sources and questions relate to Case Study 1: Civil rights movement in the United States (1954– 1965) – Nature and characteristics of discrimination: Segregation and education; Brown versus Board of Education decision (1954).
Source O
Tom Brady, a judge and a leader of the pro-segregation White Citizens’ Council movement, writing about his speech to the Indianola Citizens’ Council in his pamphlet A Review of Black Monday (28 October 1954).
The Supreme Court says, “You have got to sit a black boy down by a white girl to have it equal.” …
You can’t do it! You can’t put little boys and little girls together—blacks and whites and have them sing together, play together, dance together, and eat together, sit side by side, and walk arm in arm, and expect for the sensitivity of those white children not to be broken down. You can’t do it! Why? That is exactly what has happened in the north, [but] they have a sufficient number of whites to absorb, and perhaps assimilate, the blacks …
We can see what happens on the surface. We don’t know what happens to the brain of [a black] man … We don’t know what it takes to make his mind different from our mind.
This Supreme Court sets aside all the laws of biology! By putting these children together in schools we will abolish all racial differences that God made. I have a little field [at the] back of my home. I notice the blackbirds stay together … I notice the geese and the ducks stayed separate from each other and yet the Supreme Court would set aside these basic laws of God and of nature and compel these various individuals to mingle, just as you would blackbirds with partridges …
The sources and questions relate to Case Study 1: Civil rights movement in the United States (1954– 1965) – Nature and characteristics of discrimination: Segregation and education; Brown versus Board of Education decision (1954).
Source M
Earl Warren, US Chief Justice, delivers the decision of the US Supreme Court in Brown v Board of Education, 17 May 1954.
We cannot turn the clock back to 1896 when Plessy versus Ferguson [a court judgment that had ruled that it was legal to have segregated schools as long as those schools had equal facilities] was written. We must consider public education in the full light of its present place in American life throughout the nation … In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education … Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be available to all on equal terms.
We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in schools on the basis of race, even though the facilities may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does … To separate Negro students from others solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority … that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone …
We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are unequal.
[Source: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Opinion; May 17, 1954; Records of the Supreme Court of the United States; Record Group 267; National Archives]
Using the sources and your own knowledge, evaluate the impact of the Brown v Board of Education decision on desegregation in US schools up to the end of 1957.
Markscheme
Apply the markbands that provide the “best fit” to the responses given by candidates and award credit wherever it is possible to do so. The following material is an indication of what candidates may elect to write about in their responses. It is neither prescriptive nor exhaustive and no set answer is required. While it is expected that there will be coverage of at least two of the sources, candidates are not required to refer to all four sources in their responses.
Indicative content
Source M This source seeks to justify the federal policy of desegregation by asserting the principle of “separate but equal” is wrong and unequal. However, it can provide no indication of compliance.
Source N This source suggests that opposition to desegregation was limited and peaceful.
Source O This source expresses opposition to the Supreme Court ruling. It is seeking to whip up opposition to desegregation in schools. The source shows that there was likely to be resistance to desegregation in the south.
Source P This source shows that the 1954 Brown v Board of Education was likely to be ineffective in the southern states because in Brown II 1955 the Supreme Court ruled that school desegregation need not be applied immediately, and it gave local judges the power to decide when it would be feasible to do so.
Own knowledge
By 1956 250,000 people had joined the White Citizens’ Councils to demand continued segregation, and the Southern Manifesto 1956—signed by southern Congressmen—denounced the Brown ruling and asserted the right of southern states to maintain segregation in accordance with the doctrine of “separate but equal”. Southern state governments, southern judges and southern police used their powers to intimidate campaigners who sought to bring segregation to an end. The equation by segregationists of the demand for civil rights with “communism” (at a time during the Cold War of particularly acute fears of communist intentions), the association of the Brown ruling with the imposition of overweening federal power at the expense of states’ rights may also be mentioned. Answers may also refer to the events at Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.
