The Intolerable Acts were a response to which event?

• A. Boston Tea Party
• B. Civil Rights Movement
• C. Dred Scott v. Sandford
• D. Plessy v. Ferguson

Answer: (A)

The event being tested is the link between colonial protest and imperial punishment. The Intolerable Acts were a set of punitive laws passed by Parliament in 1774 in response to the Boston Tea Party, a dramatic act of defiance in December 1773 where colonists dumped tea into Boston Harbor to oppose the Tea Act. These measures aimed to punish Massachusetts and curb colonial resistance by closing the port, reshaping the colonial government, allowing royal officials to be tried in Britain, and requiring housing for troops. The intended effect was to compel compliance, but they backfired by rallying the colonies together and helping spark the First Continental Congress and a move toward independence. The other choices relate to later U.S. civil rights events or to Supreme Court rulings about slavery and segregation, not to British reactions to colonial protests.