Source E The committee finds that the promise of equality contained in the Declaration of Independence and reinforced by the Fourteenth Amendment remains un...

This is a "How far do you agree?" question worth 15 marks about whether the struggle for equality made little progress between 1868 and 1947. This requires a sustained, well-balanced argument across a long time period.

What the source contributes: The 1947 report of the President's Committee on Civil Rights ("To Secure These Rights") documents ongoing inequalities nearly 80 years after the Fourteenth Amendment. It identifies continued segregation in schools, transportation, and public facilities; voting barriers including poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation; discrimination against Japanese Americans after wartime internment; and the lack of basic services for Native Americans on reservations. The source suggests that progress has been very limited.

Evidence supporting the statement (little progress):

• After Reconstruction ended in 1877, progress was reversed. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) legalised "separate but equal" segregation.
• Jim Crow laws spread across the South, creating systematic racial separation.
• The Fifteenth Amendment's guarantee of voting rights was undermined by poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and literacy tests.
• Lynching remained common, with over 4,000 recorded between 1882 and 1968.
• The internment of Japanese Americans (1942-1945) under Executive Order 9066 showed that racial prejudice could override constitutional rights even in the twentieth century.
• Native Americans did not receive full citizenship until 1924.

Evidence of significant progress:

• The NAACP, founded in 1909, began legal challenges to segregation that would eventually lead to Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
• The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s celebrated African American culture and intellectual achievement.
• African Americans served with distinction in both World Wars, strengthening demands for equal treatment.
• The Great Migration (c.1910-1970) saw millions of Black Americans move north, gaining access to better jobs, education, and voting rights.
• A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington Movement (1941) led President Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802, banning discrimination in defence industries.
• Jackie Robinson broke baseball's colour barrier in 1947.

Reaching Level 4 (13-15 marks): The highest level demands a sustained argument across the full period with critical source evaluation. A strong conclusion should argue that progress was uneven and incomplete rather than absent. The period saw the building of organisations, legal strategies, and social movements that would become the foundation for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The very existence of the committee that produced the source represents progress: the federal government was officially acknowledging the problem. Use the source as evidence of remaining inequalities while your own knowledge demonstrates the progress that did occur.