The Watts Rebellion is a clear reminder of how urban racial tension and policing struggles sparked major upheaval in mid-1960s America. It took place in August 1965 in Watts, the Black neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. What began with a routine arrest and growing frustrations over police brutality and economic inequality erupted into several days of protests, looting, and clashes with police and the National Guard. The event highlighted the intense anger and demand for change in urban Black communities and influenced conversations about civil rights, policing, and economic opportunity. Among the options, only the one that names 1965 and Watts, Los Angeles, accurately matches the historical event. The other locations and years refer to different uprisings in Newark (1967), Harlem (1964), or Birmingham (1963), which are separate episodes.

Reapportionment and the one person, one vote principle are about making sure each vote has roughly the same weight by drawing legislative districts with equal populations. Reynolds v. Sims is the case that held state legislative districts must be apportioned roughly by population, applying the 14th Amendment’s equal protection guarantee to ensure equal voting influence in every district. This solidified the standard that rural and urban areas should have fair, proportional representation, ending distorted maps that gave some voters far more power than others. It also builds on the idea from Baker v. Carr that redistricting issues are justiciable, but Reynolds specifically applies the one person, one vote principle to state legislatures. The other cases address different rights or issues—Gideon v. Wainwright concerns the right to counsel, Plessy v. Ferguson deals with segregation, and Dred Scott v. Sandford concerns citizenship and slavery—so Reynolds best fits the question about reapportionment and vote weight.

The key idea is that the 1968 Civil Rights Act contains a specific provision focused on housing discrimination, known as the Fair Housing Act. This part—Title VIII—prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, and it later expanded to include additional protected classes. Because this housing-protection component is the part that people most commonly refer to when they say the Civil Rights Act of 1968 is known as the Fair Housing Act, that name fits best. The Voting Rights Act is a separate law from 1965 centered on protecting voting rights, and there isn’t a federal act simply called the Equal Rights Act tied to this 1968 statute, so those names don’t apply to this question.

This question tests knowledge of who spoke the famous "I Have a Dream" line. The speech was delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial. King, a Baptist minister and leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, championed nonviolent civil disobedience to achieve racial equality and economic justice. His speech articulated a hopeful vision of a racially integrated America and called for an end to segregation and discrimination. Malcolm X was a prominent figure advocating Black empowerment and sometimes more militant approaches; Rosa Parks is best known for sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott, not for delivering this speech; Thurgood Marshall was a lawyer who argued landmark civil rights cases and later became a Supreme Court Justice, but he did not deliver this address.

This item tests knowledge of where a major 1960s student rights movement began. It started at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964. Berkeley students challenged campus rules that tightly restricted political activity—arguing that student groups should be free to organize, distribute literature, and hold protests on campus without excessive permits. Led by figures like Mario Savio, the protests culminated in sit-ins on Sproul Hall and a push that forced the administration to loosen these restrictions. That victory at Berkeley helped spark a broader wave of campus activism across the country and became a defining moment in the era’s debates over free speech and student rights. The other universities listed had notable student movements, but the Free Speech Movement itself originated at Berkeley in 1964.