• Trent Franks (R-AZ), said in 2010 that “far more of the African-American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by policies of slavery.” And Franks also said: “In this country, we had slavery for God knows how long. And now we look back on it and we say ‘How brave were they? What was the matter with them? You know, I can’t believe, you know, four million slaves. This is incredible.’ And we’re right, we’re right. We should look back on that with criticism. It is a crushing mark on America’s soul. And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted. Far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by policies of slavery. And I think, What does it take to get us to wake up?”

• The Republican House Majority whip, Steve Scalise, was an honored guest at the 2002 International White Supremacist Convention.

• Former Arkansas Republican House Representative  Jon Hubbard made a series of racially charged statements in his self-published book,  Letters to the Editor: Confessions of a Frustrated Conservative, including saying that black people don’t “appreciate the value of a good education” and have yet to “establish themselves as inclusive and contributing members of society.” He also claimed integration of schools is hurting white students, that African slaves had better lives under slavery than in Africa. He warned that a situation is developing in the United States which is similar to that of Nazi Germany. Hubbard wrote: “… the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.” (Pages 183-89)

• Conservative pundit Ann Coulter, who is well known for her incendiary comments and hate speech, told Fox “News” host Megyn Kelly that, “The worst thing that was done to black people since slavery was the great society programs.”

• Michele Bachmann (MN-R) and former presidential candidate Rick Santorum both signed Bob Vander Plaats’ pledge that opposed same-sex marriage and asserted that life was better for slaves: A child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”

•  In 2011, Orange County Republican Central Committee member Marilyn Davenport sent an email that depicted President Obama as an ape and captioned the photo with “Now you know why no birth certificate.”

• Conservative hero Cliven Bundy said “And because they [blacks] were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do? They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

• Conservative preacher Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson – an African American – said “Thank God for slavery, because if not, the blacks who are here would have been stuck in Africa.”

• In his 2008 essay on the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, “A Brief for Whitey,” conservative Pat Buchanan wrote: “It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.”

• In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) gutted a core part of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. In a 5-4 ruling with the court’s conservatives in the majority, the justices ruled that Congress had used outdated facts in continuing to force nine states, mainly in the South, to get federal approval for voting rule changes affecting blacks and other minorities.

After SCOTUS made it easier to discriminate against voters, many red states quickly changed their laws making it more difficult for millions to vote. And many of those potential voters were African-America, Hispanic and the working poor.