Giles v. Harris: The most important Supreme Court case you’ve never heard of. Born in slavery, Jackson Giles pursued many different careers throughout his life — grocer, newspaper publisher, postal worker. But his focus was politics. Giles drew upon his 2 decades of political experience to battle the state of Alabama in 1902. He took the lawsuit — secretly financed by Tuskegee Institute president Booker T. Washington — all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, demanding the rights stolen from him and hundreds of thousands of Black Alabamians by the state's Constitution. But the high court ruled against him, reinforcing Black voter suppression for six decades. Though he lost the little-known case, Giles exemplifies Black southerners' often-ignored fight against the rise of Jim Crow and unwillingness to submit to the victory of segregation. The whereabouts of Giles after the case were a mystery, but USA TODAY was able to reconstruct his life. Go to the link in our bio read his story. 📸: archive.org, Alabama Department of Archives and History