James Strom Thurmond (December 5, 1902 – June 26, 2003) was an American politician who served for 48 years as a United States Senator. He also ran for the Presidency of the United States in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrat) candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes. Thurmond later represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 until 2003, at first as a Democrat and after 1964 as a Republican. He switched out of support for the conservatism of Republican presidential candidate and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who shared his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He left office as the only senator to reach the age of 100 while still in office and as the oldest-serving and longest-serving senator in U.S. history (although he was later surpassed in the latter by Robert Byrd). Thurmond holds the record for the longest-serving Dean of the United States Senate in U.S. history at 14 years.

He conducted the longest filibuster ever by a lone senator, in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length, nonstop. In the 1960s, he continued to fight against civil rights legislation. He always insisted he had never been a racist, but was merely opposed to excessive federal authority. However, he infamously said that "all the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools, our churches and our places of recreation and amusement", while attributing the movement for integration to Communism. Starting in the 1970s, he moderated his position on race, but continued to defend his early segregationist campaigns on the basis of states' rights in the context of Southern society at the time, never fully renouncing his earlier viewpoints.

Abraham "Abe" Fortas (June 19, 1910 – April 5, 1982) was a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice from 1965 to 1969. Originally from Tennessee, Fortas became a law professor at Yale, and subsequently advised the Securities and Exchange Commission. He then worked at the Interior Department under Franklin D. Roosevelt, and subsequently Harry Truman appointed him to delegations that helped set up the UN. Later, in private practice, Fortas represented Lyndon Johnson in an electoral dispute, and formed close ties with the president-to-be. Fortas also represented Clarence Earl Gideon before the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case involving the right to counsel. As a Johnson appointee to the Court, Fortas maintained a close working relationship with the president, and in 1968 Johnson tried to elevate Fortas to the position of Chief Justice, but that nomination faced a filibuster due at least in part to ethics problems that later caused him to step down from the Court. Fortas returned to private practice, sometimes appearing before the judges with whom he had served.

Robert Joseph "Bob" Dole (born July 22, 1923) is an American attorney and politician. Dole represented Kansas in the United States Senate from 1969 to 1996, was Gerald Ford's Vice Presidential running mate in the 1976 presidential election, and was Senate Majority Leader from 1985 to 1987 and in 1995 and 1996. Dole was the Republican party nominee in the presidential election of 1996, but he lost to incumbent Democrat Bill Clinton. Dole is currently special counsel at the Washington, D.C. office of law firm Alston & Bird.

In 2007, President George W. Bush appointed Dole as a co-chair of the commission to investigate problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, along with Donna Shalala, a former member of the Clinton cabinet. Dole is married to former U.S. cabinet member and former U.S. Senator Elizabeth Hanford Dole of North Carolina. Bob Dole is currently a member of the advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Bob Dole was born in Russell, Kansas, the son of Bina M. (née Talbott; 1904–1983) and Doran Ray Dole (1901–1975). His father, who had moved the family to Russell while Dole was still a toddler, made a living by running a small creamery. Among his father's customers was the father of Arlen Specter who ran a junkyard in the town and used Dole's scales to weigh junk. Specter, who was six years younger than Dole and graduated Russell High School in 1947, was not a Dole contemporary although Specter's brother Morton Specter and Dole's brother Kenny Dole were friends. During the Great Depression, which hit Kansas very hard, the Dole family moved into the basement of their home and rented out the rest of the house. As a boy, he took many odd jobs around Russell, and he would later work as a soda jerk in the local drug store.

Chester Trent Lott, Sr. (born October 9, 1941), is a former United States Senator from Mississippi, who served in numerous leadership positions in both the United States House of Representatives and the Senate. He entered Congress as one of the first of a wave of Republicans winning seats in Southern states that had been solidly Democratic. He became Senate Majority Leader, then fell from power after praising Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist Dixiecrat presidential bid.

Lott entered Congress in 1968 as an administrative assistant to Representative William M. Colmer of Mississippi, who was also the chairman of the House Rules Committee. Upon Colmer's retirement, Lott won Colmer's former seat in the House of Representatives. In 1988, Lott ran successfully for the U.S. Senate to replace another retiree, John Stennis. After Republicans took the majority in the Senate, Lott became Senate Majority Whip in 1995 and then Senate Majority Leader in 1996, upon the resignation of presidential nominee Bob Dole of Kansas.

Alfred Charles "Al" Sharpton, Jr. (born October 3, 1954) is an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host. In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election. He hosts his own radio talk show, Keepin' It Real, and he makes regular guest appearances on Fox News (such as The O'Reilly Factor)CNN, and MSNBC. In 2011, he was named the host of MSNBC's PoliticsNation, a nightly talk show.

Sharpton's supporters praise "his ability and willingness to defy the power structure that is seen as the cause of their suffering" and consider him "a man who is willing to tell it like it is". Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, a one-time foe, said that Sharpton deserves the respect he enjoys among African Americans: "He is willing to go to jail for them, and he is there when they need him."

His critics describe him as "a political radical who is to blame, in part, for the deterioration of race relations". Sociologist Orlando Patterson has referred to him as a racial arsonist, while liberal columnist Derrick Z. Jackson has called him the black equivalent of Richard Nixon and Pat Robertson. Sharpton sees much of the criticism as a sign of his effectiveness. "In many ways, what they consider criticism is complimenting my job," he said. "An activist's job is to make public civil rights issues until there can be a climate for change."