| Date | May 2021 | Marks available | 9 | Reference code | 21M.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
Source M Statement of purpose adopted in 1960 by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), revised 29 April 1962.
We affirm [state] the philosophical or religious ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of our purpose …
Through nonviolence, courage displaces fear; love transforms hate. Acceptance dissipates [banishes] prejudice; hope ends despair. Peace dominates war; faith reconciles doubt. Mutual respect cancels hatred. Justice for all overcomes injustice … Love is the central theme of nonviolence.
Love is the force by which God binds man to himself and man to man. Such love goes to the extreme; it remains loving and forgiving even in the midst of hostility. It matches the capacity of evil to inflict suffering with an even more enduring capacity to absorb evil, all the while persisting in love …
Nonviolence nurtures [encourages] the atmosphere in which reconciliation and justice become actual possibilities.
[Source: Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, 1960. Statement of purpose. [pdf] Available at: http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/protest/text2/snccstatementofpurpose.pdf [accessed 8 May 2019]. Source adapted.]
Source N Herbert Block, a cartoonist, depicts an Alabama State Trooper in the cartoon “I got one of ‘em [them] just as she almost made it back to the church” in the US newspaper, The Washington Post (9 March 1965). The badge on the officer’s arm reads “Selma Alabama Special Storm Trooper”.
[Source: A 1961 Herblock Cartoon, © The Herb Block Foundation]
Note: in Source O the word “Negro” is used to reflect the place and time of the original English language source. Today, in many countries, the word is no longer in common usage.
Source O Robert Weisbrot, a professor specializing in African American history and civil rights, writing in the academic book Freedom Bound: A History of America’s Civil Rights Movement (1990).
King urged Negroes to sacrifice, to go to jail if necessary, not to defeat whites but to free all Montgomery from injustice … Gradually he accepted absolute nonviolence as the spiritual foundation on which to build any movement for justice. After discussions with his wife he rescinded [withdrew] an application for a gun permit and dismissed the volunteers guarding his home, despite dozens of death threats against him and his family. When a bomb narrowly missed killing his wife and children, in January 1956, King upheld his faith in nonviolence by dispersing a mob that had gathered outside the remains of his dynamited front porch. Hurrying home after the blast, he arrived in time to hear a Negro provoke a policeman, “Now you got your .38 [gun] and I got mine; so let’s battle it out.” Fearing an imminent race riot, King told the armed and angry mob that there was a higher way: “We must love our white brothers no matter what they do to us. We must make them know that we love them.” To the astonished relief of white onlookers, King’s Negro listeners quietly returned to their homes … The [Montgomery bus] boycott lasted nearly a year … Late in December 1956, blacks boarded the buses in Montgomery as peacefully as possible, in accordance with the instructions of boycott leaders. Several whites took seats beside Negroes, and there was little violence.
[Source: From FREEDOM BOUND: A HISTORY OF AMERICA’S CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT by Robert Weisbrot. Copyright © 1990 by Robert Weisbrot. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. This selection may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. https://amzn.to/2TEBuuj.]
Source P Steve Estes, an historian writing in the academic book I Am a Man! Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement (2005).
Nation of Islam members and ministers called civil rights leaders unmanly cowards, in large part because of their allegiance to the philosophy of nonviolence. Discussing the student sit-ins that swept across the South in 1960 and inspired the formation of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Malcolm X told reporters, “Anybody can sit. An old woman can sit. A coward can sit … It takes a man to stand.” Likewise, when Martin Luther King led a nonviolent civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, Malcolm questioned his recruitment of women and children for marches. “Real men don’t put their children on the firing line.” …
More to Malcolm’s liking were southern rebels who recommended armed self-defence. Like these men, Malcolm and other ministers in the Nation articulated [voiced] their support for self-defence in terms of protecting womanhood. “You’ve got Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members knocking Black women down in front of a camera and that poor Black man standing on the sidelines because he’s nonviolent,” Malcolm said, scolding those who responded peacefully …
Malcolm and King were both “God’s angry men,” but the two charismatic ministers were far apart philosophically. King’s faith in Christian love and nonviolent protest seemed unstoppable. This contrasted dramatically with Malcolm’s equally passionate faith in complete racial separation and the Nation of Islam.
[Source: From I AM A MAN!: RACE, MANHOOD, AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT by Steve Estes. Copyright © 2005 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. www.uncpress.org.]
Using the sources and your own knowledge, evaluate the effectiveness of non-violence in the African American struggle for civil rights.
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 The source claims that non-violence is an effective method in achieving civil rights. It shows the importance of non-violence in the SNCC’s strategies.
Source N This source demonstrates the likely ineffectiveness of non-violence in the face of police brutality.
Source O This source demonstrates not only Martin Luther King and his followers’ belief in non-violence in the face of violence, but it also shows the effectiveness of such an approach in ending segregation on buses in Montgomery.
Source P This source offers Malcolm X’s arguments on the ineffectiveness of non-violence and his support of armed self-defence.
Own knowledge Candidates may refer to examples of non-violence being effective in furthering civil rights. For example, they may discuss successful legal challenges, such as Brown versus Board of Education. They may refer to marches and rallies which brought civil rights to the fore, spurring the federal government into action and leading to the passing of the Civil Rights Act 1964.
Candidates may offer further details on divisions within the civil rights movement as a result of the non-violent approach. They may also refer to disillusion with King’s methods. Candidates may argue the brutal deaths of freedom riders in 1964 were a consequence of the ineffectiveness of the non-violent approach. Candidates may argue that non-violence failed to eliminate deep-seated racism.
Examiners report
It was again pleasing to find that the majority of candidates offered a response with some development for the fourth question. There was also continuity with previous sessions in that most responses were focused on the set question and had some reference to the sources to develop and support the analysis. For example, for Q12 many candidates effectively used the sources to argue that ideology played a key role and also evaluated other factors at play in influencing the foreign policies of Italy and Germany. For Q16 candidates also developed coherent arguments evaluating the effectiveness of non-violence in the African American struggle for civil rights. Nevertheless, as suggested earlier in this report, there were a sizeable proportion of candidates that seemed to have allowed too little time to develop an extended response. There were also a number of responses that lacked focus on the question, for example for Q12 rather than focusing on foreign policy, a few candidates discussed the influence of ideology on domestic policies. As with previous sessions, some responses tended to list the content of the sources without engaging with an analysis of the question. Many candidates did not synthesize knowledge of the case study into their response whereas a small minority wrote entirely from their own knowledge and did not refer to the sources.
