Cite as: 517 U. S. 186 (1996)
Breyer, J., concurring in judgment
which lead to endorsement or selection of candidates who will run in primary or general elections"). And it is why he told the full House of Representatives (after the Committee had accepted his amendment) that his change
"would extend the protections of the bill to the type of situation which arose last year when the regular Democratic delegation from Mississippi to the Democratic National Convention was chosen through a series of Party caucuses and conventions from which Negroes were excluded." 111 Cong. Rec. 16273 (1965).
See also H. R. Rep. No. 439, supra, at 32.
Representative Bingham's amendment, as the dissents point out, applies only to actions taken by "State or political subdivision." 42 U. S. C. § 1973c (1988 ed.). But that language did not automatically place a party's all-white evasive maneuvers beyond the statute's reach, because the Supreme Court had already held that the word "State" as it appears in the Fifteenth Amendment could constitutionally apply to certain activities of political parties, such as nominating activities. See Smith, supra, at 662-666; Terry, supra, at 473 (opinion of Frankfurter, J.) ("The application of the prohibition of the Fifteenth Amendment to 'any State' is translated by legal jargon to read 'State action' "). The question before us is whether in 1965 Congress intended its words to place even a party's convention-based, all-white evasive maneuvers beyond the statute's reach, thereby ignoring even the Mississippi Democratic Party's efforts the year before to use an "all-white" convention process to help nominate a candidate for President of the United States.
The answer to this question must be "no." In light of history—that of Jim Crow and that of the Act—one cannot understand Congress as having intended to endorse any such evasion. And that is as far as we need go to answer the statutory question presented by this case.
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