Donald Trump began his campaign for the presidency by branding Mexicans as "rapists." He initially declined to denounce David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. One week after his 2017 inauguration, the president temporarily banned people from seven mostly Muslim countries from entering the United States. That summer, he said there were "very fine people" among torch-wielding white supremacists who descended on Charlottesville.

In 1977, two black men nominated for key Justice Department posts by President Jimmy Carter easily won approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee. After confirmation by the full Senate, Drew Days III became the nation's first black head of the department's civil rights division and Wade McCree became the second black solicitor general. Only one member of the committee voted against them. It wasn't segregationists Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) or James Eastland (D-Miss.).