878
Opinion of Kennedy, J.
jails, public housing, governmental services—and deprived its black citizens of the opportunity to participate in local government." 757 F. Supp. 1560, 1562 (MD Ga. 1991). And even today, though legal segregation no longer exists, "more black than white residents of Bleckley County continue to endure a depressed socio-economic status." Ibid. No black person has run for or been elected to the office of Bleckley County Commissioner, and the District Judge stated that, having run for public office himself, he "wouldn't run if [he] were black in Bleckley [C]ounty." See 955 F. 2d 1563, 1571 (CA11 1992).
The court rejected respondents' constitutional contention, however, concluding that respondents "ha[d] failed to provide any evidence that Bleckley County's single member county commission [wa]s the product of original or continued racial animus or discriminatory intent." 757 F. Supp., at 1571. Nor was there evidence that the system was maintained "for tenuous reasons" or that the commissioner himself was unresponsive to the "particularized needs" of the black community. Id., at 1564. There was no "slating process" to stand as a barrier to black candidates, and there was testimony from respondents that they were unaware of any racial appeals in recent elections. Id., at 1562, n. 2, 1583.
In their statutory claim, respondents asserted that the county's single-member commission violated § 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 437, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1973. Under the statute, the suit contended, Bleckley County must have a county commission of sufficient size that, with single-member election districts, the county's black citizens would constitute a majority in one of the single-member districts. Applying the § 2 framework established in Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30 (1986), the District Court found that respondents satisfied the first of the three Gingles preconditions because black voters were sufficiently numerous and compact that they could have constituted a majority in one district of a multimember commission. In particular,
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