How popular movements were challenged
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Flip to reveal answersWhat are the four main obstacles popular movements faced (topic 9.3)?
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Question
What are the four main obstacles popular movements faced (topic 9.3)?
Answer
Political opposition, divisions within the movement, violent opposition, and resilience of traditional ideas.
Question
Co-optation
Answer
When a government offers limited concessions to reduce pressure for bigger change, diverting a movement's energy.
Question
COINTELPRO
Answer
A secret FBI programme (from the 1950s–1970s) that surveilled and disrupted activist groups, including wiretapping Martin Luther King Jr.
Question
What happened at Birmingham, Alabama in 1963?
Answer
Police commissioner Bull Connor ordered fire hoses and attack dogs turned on peaceful child and teenage civil rights marchers.
Question
What happened on 'Bloody Sunday' in Selma, 1965?
Answer
State troopers violently beat unarmed voting-rights marchers with clubs as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Question
Explain the split between the SCLC and Black Power in the US Civil Rights Movement.
Answer
The SCLC (King) favoured non-violent protest within the system; Black Power (Carmichael) favoured self-defence and separate Black-led organising, frustrated by slow progress.
Question
Suffragists vs suffragettes — what was the difference?
Answer
Suffragists (NUWSS, Fawcett) used peaceful lobbying and petitions; suffragettes (WSPU, Pankhurst) used direct action like window-smashing and hunger strikes.
Question
Why did the British government's force-feeding of suffragettes backfire?
Answer
Public horror at the treatment of imprisoned women built sympathy for the movement and pressure for reform, similar to reactions to Birmingham in the US.
Question
How does the anti-apartheid movement illustrate the same four obstacles?
Answer
Apartheid laws banned the ANC (political opposition); Sharpeville (1960) and Soweto (1976) showed violent state repression; the movement split over non-violence vs armed struggle (Umkhonto we Sizwe, 1961).
Question
Process: how to structure a Paper 2 answer comparing how movements were challenged.
Answer
Name the obstacle, give a specific dated example, link it to one of the four concepts, then compare what was similar and different across two regions.
Question
Why is 'resilience of traditional ideas' a distinct obstacle from government opposition?
Answer
It refers to slow-changing attitudes among ordinary people (e.g. belief women belonged only in the home), not official laws or force — cultural resistance can outlast legal change.
Question
Compare the type of violent opposition faced in the US Civil Rights Movement and the British suffrage movement.
Answer
US: direct police violence against marchers (dogs, hoses, clubs). Britain: violence inflicted within the prison system (force-feeding of hunger strikers) rather than on the streets.
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How were popular movements challenged?
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