| Date | May 2018 | Marks available | 4 | Reference code | 18M.1.BP.TZ0.14 |
| Level | Both SL and HL | Paper | Paper 1 - first exams 2017 | Time zone | TZ0 |
| Command term | Analyse | Question number | 14 | Adapted from | N/A |
Question
Source O
George C Wallace, Governor of Alabama, in a speech delivered the day after the US President had signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, “The Civil Rights Movement: Fraud, Sham and Hoax” (4 July 1964).
[This Act] is a sham, and a hoax [trick]. This law will live in infamy [shame] … Never before in the history of this nation have so many human rights been destroyed by a single Act of Congress. It is an act of tyranny. It is the assassin’s knife stuck in the back of liberty.
Today this tyranny is imposed by the central federal government which claims the right to rule over our lives ... Every person in every aspect of our daily lives becomes subject to the criminal provisions [clauses] of this bill. It makes the exercise of our freedoms a federal crime … I am having nothing to do with this so-called Civil Rights Bill.
We will not stand idly by while the [US] Supreme Court continues to invade the prerogatives [powers] left [granted] rightly to the states by the American constitution.
A left wing monster has risen up in this nation. It has invaded the government … and it intends to destroy the freedom and liberty of you and me … Red China and Soviet Russia are prime examples of what will happen.
[Source: Permission granted by Alabama Department of Archives and History]
With reference to its origin, purpose and content, analyse the value and limitations of Source O for an historian studying the struggle for voting rights for African-Americans during the 1960s.
Markscheme
Value:
• The speech is by George Wallace, Governor of Alabama on 4 July 1964. He was an important political figure and he would have to implement the Civil Rights Act.
• It provides a contemporary insight into views on civil rights reform by its opponents.
• The emotional language of the speech demonstrates the strength of feeling regarding civil rights issues.
Limitations:
• It is a speech aimed at whipping up opposition to this Act and the strident tone adopted by Wallace in his speech shows how emotive such opposition could be.
• One cannot tell how representative Wallace’s views were—it is just one man’s speech.
• Since this speech was made in 1964, it cannot tell us the extent to which opposition to the implementation of the Voting Rights Act 1965 would be significant in blocking African-Americans’ access to the vote.
The focus of the question is on the value and limitations of the source. If only value or limitations are discussed, award a maximum of [2]. Origins, purpose and content should be used as supporting evidence to make relevant comments on the values and limitations. For [4] there must be at least one reference to each of them in either the values or the limitations.
