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but it seems plausible that this was the central organizational vehicle blacks created in Alabama to challenge disfranchisement. Giles brought his action of behalf of 5,000 similarly situated negro citizens'"of Montgomery County. His lawyer, Wilford H. Smith of New York City, was the personal lawyer and friend of Booker T. Washington; Smith had come to Alabama at Washington's urging to handle the case, and Washington had secretly raised the funds to support the litigation -indeed, so concerned was Washington that he was risking his public reputation that he wrote his correspondence about the litigation in code. To avoid the defects of previous litigation, Smith pulled together extensive newspaper reports chronicling the comparative numbers of blacks and whites disfranchised in different counties of alabama by the new constitution. Similar suits were filed in Louisiana and Virginia, which appear to have awaited the result in Giles. The financial, organizational, personal, and emotional resources the black community invested in Giles were substantial -and these were scarce resources that could not be marshalled time and time again in communities where public defiance frequently met economic or more violent forms of intimidation. Professor Heckman's focus on the bare legal text of Giles fails to appreciate the unique effort mobilized to press the litigation, nor the fact that the litigation was at one and the same time one of the only cards, as well as the last card, the activist black community had to play to challenge disfranchisement in the national political arena Alabama's lawyer also urged the Court to confront disfranchisement head-on, instead of framing the case in narrow procedural or technical terms. He forthrightly admitted that the I Morgan Kousser, Colorblind Injustice 322(1999) "My collaborator, Professor Rebecca J Scott, has done research which suggests that Louisiana officials put the challenge to disfranchisement on hold there, and then after Giles pressed the courts to resolve it, after the state brought forward arguments based on Giles itself as to why the case should be dismissed3 ( *" . D 5* #%%% 3 . "! .B1 " 0* ' * * " " * + " . * 0 * . " 0 * . - .* *. 0 8 +. . C. * . &" * 9 8 : 3 * 0 "F 1 40H "0 0 > F ;1 . F * " F * * 7 " 0F 0 *. * 0 . * + + * "1 * 6 + 0 + *. . 0 * .. 0 * 1* 0 ' * I "0 +0 * " " 8 " " * . * + " 0*. 7 0 * * . * 0 *. /* + ! * . 6 " * /* .8 " 0 "0 " + . * .0 * * < " 0 *