Williams took this pretty hard: Her local state representative was assuming that those whom she was helping were being sought for crimes. When I reached Lowe on the phone, he assured me that his email was meant in jest. "It was sent in a jokey fashion with one of those winks and a smile after it," he said. "It was a joke. You'd hope that people could have playful banter and wouldn't try to twist that on the other person."

Williams might have been more likely to take the e-mail with a grain of salt if she had not faced, throughout her life, echoes of the pre–New South. It started literally at birth: She was born just after midnight on January 1, 1952, in Savannah, Georgia, which, under a local promotion for the "first baby of the year," would've entitled her family to a year's supply of free milk and diapers—had she been white. She recalls not being allowed to step foot in Savannah's graceful town squares. She recalls what happened when her parents joined a lawsuit to integrate the city's schools when she was nine years old: the picture of the burning cross affixed to their Dodge Dart, the brick through their house window. There were five black students in her class of 200 at the Medical College of Georgia. Her neighbor in Sumter flew a Confederate flag outside his house for 15 years. And so on.

But nothing brought home the South's unreconstructed racial dynamic as much as the fight over voter ID, as it dawned on Williams what a disproportionate burden the law would have on poor black residents in her adopted state. After Williams put out the word—in flyers and signs at her office—that she would help people get photo IDs, she was swamped with demands. One of the first to seek assistance was Thelma Hodge, a 76-year-old from the hamlet of Mayville, 15 miles from Sumter. Hodge lacked a birth certificate, and when Williams called the local health department about getting one, she says she was told to "contact vital statistics." That led to a call to a company called VitalChek, which has rights to a national registry of birth certificates and charges $30 for a copy, plus a $12.95 handling fee, plus $9.75 shipping—a total of $64.70. Williams put it on her credit card, as she would for many others. "But that's when the light bulb went off. I said, 'OK, I see what you're trying to show me,'" she said.

One after another, the people came to Williams. Amanda Wolfe, 28, not only did not have a birth certificate but did not know who her birth parents were. Naomi Gordon, 57, had a birth certificate but it misspelled her first name as "Lmnoie," the apparent result of having been birthed by a midwife with sloppy or poor writing skills. Her brother Raymond Rutherford, who works at Wal-Mart, had his name misspelled as Rayman; his only photo ID was one he'd bought from the local liquor store in 1976 for $10. Junior Glover, 78, didn't have a birth certificate; his name was recorded in a family Bible that was destroyed in a fire in 1989. Clyde Daniels had a birth certificate but no proof of his current address, as all his household records were in his wife's name. He told Williams, "There's nothing wrong with my mind, Dr. Williams, my wife is just a better businessperson."