Potter Stewart

“ If we can deal with individuals, that is a less radical course, and works less interference with local governments. * * * It would seem more accordant with reason that the easier, more direct, and more certain method of dealing with individual criminals was preferable, and that the more thorough method of superseding State authority should only be resorted to when the deprivation of rights and the condition of outlawry was so general as to prevail in all quarters in defiance of or by permission of the local government.' Id., at 459. ”

“ Not only may Congress impose such liability, but the varieties of private conduct that it may make criminally punishable or civilly remediable extend far beyond the actual imposition of slavery or involuntary servitude. ”

“ Kemper County is on the Mississippi-Alabama border. One of the results of the conspiracy, according to the complaint, was to prevent the petitioners and other Negroes from exercising their 'rights to travel the public highways without restraint in the same terms as white citizens in Kemper County, Mississippi.' Finally, the conspiracy was alleged to have been inspired by the respondents' erroneous belief that Grady, a Tennessean, was a worker for Negro civil rights. ”

“ Our cases have firmly established that the right of interstate travel is constitutionally protected, does not necessarily rest on the Fourteenth Amendment, and is assertable against private as well as governmental interference. ”

“ Justice Frankfurter's plurality opinion, without contravention from the concurrence or dissent, concluded that 'if language is to carry any meaning at all it must be clear that the principal purpose of (§ 241) , unlike (18 U.S.C. § 242) , was to reach private action rather than officers of a State acting under its authority. Men who 'go in disguise upon the public highway, or upon the premises of another' are not likely to be acting in official capacities.' 341 U.S., at 76, 71 S.Ct., at 584. ”

“ Hardyman was correctly decided on its own facts is a question with which we need not here be concerned. But it is clear, in the light of the evolution of decisional law in the years that have passed since that case was decided, that many of the constitutional problems there perceived simply do not exist. ”