| Date | November 2021 | Marks available | 4 | Reference code | 21N.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
Note: In Source M, the word “Negro” is used to reflect the place and time of the original source. Today, in many countries, the word is no longer in common usage.
Source M Lyndon B Johnson, President of the United States (US), making a speech to the US Congress on voting rights (15 March 1965).
In Selma, Alabama, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested against the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God [a religious leader], was killed … Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote … Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes … The Constitution says that no person shall be kept from voting because of his race or his color. We have all sworn an oath before God to support and to defend that Constitution. We must now act in obedience to that oath … I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote … This proposed Act will remove restrictions to voting in all elections—Federal, State and local—which have been used to deny Negroes the right to vote … It is wrong—deadly wrong—to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country.
[Source: Johnson, L.B., 1965. ‘I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy’, The American
Promise – 1965. [online] Available at: https://www.lbjlibrary.org/object/text/special-message-congress-americanpromise-
03-15-1965. Lyndon B. Johnson Library, National Archives and Records Administration. Adapted.]
With reference to its origin, purpose and content, analyse the value and limitations of Source M for an historian studying the policy of the US government in regard to voting rights.
Markscheme
Value:
- As the contemporary President of the US he is likely to have thorough knowledge of the situation.
- It suggests that the US government was aware of the need to help African Americans to exercise their right to vote.
- The source shows the rationale used to convince Congress to vote for the Act.
Limitations:
- The source provides no precise information about the illegal barriers which the US government was seeking to eliminate.
- The President may be exaggerating in order to win support in Congress for his Voting Rights Act.
- As events were still unfolding, we do not know how effective the Voting Rights Act was.
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]. Origin, purpose and content should be used as supporting evidence to make relevant comments on the value and limitations. For [4] there must be at least one reference to each of them in either the value or the limitations.
Examiners report
As highlighted above, and in previous reports, candidates demonstrated an understanding of how to identify the origin, purpose and content of a source and most were able to offer some sound analysis of value and limitation derived from these. However, there remains a tendency for lengthy descriptions of the origin, purpose and content of the source, at the expense of actual evaluation or analysis. Related to this, some candidates, for example, offered an identification of the purpose of the source without going on to explain how this was a value and/or limitation. Candidates should also be cautioned against a note-form response as these tend to lack clarity in terms of explanation of value and limitation. In addition, it was disappointing to find that a small number of candidates had analysed the wrong source, which reinforces the recommendation that questions should be read carefully.
