Ruby McCollum

Ruby McCollum, an African American woman, was the wife of Sam McCollum, aka "Bolita Sam," the wealthy gambling kingpin of bolita activities in North Central Florida. On Sunday morning, August 3, 1952, she shot and killed her white lover, prominent Live Oak, Florida, physician and state senator-elect, Dr. C. Leroy Adams. [Wadsworth, Louie. "Dr. Adams Slain by Negress." (the "Suwannee Democrat, August 8, 1952).] She was tried by state's attorney Keith Black and convicted of first degree murder on December 20, 1952 and sentenced to death, despite her assertion that Adams had forced sex upon her and insisted that she bear his child. ["State of Florida vs. Ruby McCollum, Defendant."] ["Chair for Ruby: Found Guilty of Slaying Florida White Doctor," "the Pittsburgh Courier", December 27, 1952)] [ Circuit Court of the Third Judicial Circuit of Florida, in and for Suwannee County. ] Her conviction and death sentence were overturned by the Florida Supreme Court on July 20, 1954, which cited Judge Hal W. Adams, the presiding judge, for failing to be present at the jury's inspection of the scene of the crime. [Opinion of the Supreme Court of Florida, filed July 20, 1954.] The Supreme Court opinion stated in part that,"This is a right that cannot be frittered away by the act of a trial judge in voluntarily absenting himself from the proceeding."

At the second trial, defense attorneys filed a motion of suggestion of insanity, and upon examination by court appointed physicians, the state attorney (now Randall Slaughter) agreed, and she was declared mentally incompetent and incarcerated for 20 years in the Florida State Hospital for mental patients at Chattahoochee. In 1974, Frank Cannon, McCollum's lead attorney at her trial, appeal and second trial, visited her in the mental hospital and filed papers to have her released under the Baker Act.

Zora Neale Hurston covered the trial for the [http://www.pbs.org/blackpress/news_bios/courier.html Pittsburgh Courier] from the fall of 1952 through the early months of 1953 , and subsequently wrote a series of articles for the "Courier" entitled, "The Life Story of Ruby McCollum," which ran in the early months of 1953 following McCollum's conviction. In her reporting for the "Courier", Hurston wrote that McCollum's trial sounded the death knell for "paramour rights", the presumed right of a white man to take a black woman to whom he was not married as his concubine.

Hurston, who was not present at the appeal or the second trial, collaborated with William Bradford Huie, who, after investigating the story and attending the appeal and second trial, published "Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail". Huie's book (published in various editions, but expanded in 1964) is the principal account of the case.

Anyone interested in this story should read Huie's book, since he updated the story past Ruby McCollum's commitment to the State Mental Hospital in Chattahoochee Florida. Huie documents the townspeoples' efforts to cover up the story, and their anger at "outsiders" meddling in the case. In the 1964 edition, he reports being turned away from visiting McCollum at Chattahooche, and comments on subsequent federal investigations, including the investigation of Sheriff Hugh Lewis of Suwannee County for contempt because of "his refusal to answer questions about Ku Klux Klan activity." [Huie, William B. "Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail", p. 118. (New York:Signet, 1964). ]

In Huie's book, Hurston's notes on the first trial--at which Huie was not present--include the fact that the jury was made up entirely of white men. Hurston also noted that, "Ruby was allowed to describe how, about 1948, during an extended absence of her husband, she had, in her home, submitted to the doctor. She was allowed to state that her youngest child was his. Yet thirty-eight times Frank Cannon attempted to proceed from this point; thirty-eight times he attempted to create the opportunity for Ruby to tell her whole story and thus explain what were her motives; thirty-eight times the State objected; and thirty-eight times Judge Adams sustained these objections." Hurston continues that Frank Cannon, frustrated by the persistence of the state prosecuting attorney, turned to the judge and said, "May God forgive you, Judge Adams, for robbing a human being of life in such a fashion." [Zora Hurston, quoted in William B. Huie. "Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail" (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1956), pp 99-100.]

C. Arthur Ellis, Jr., Ph.D., who published the entire transcript of the trial, notes other incidents in the case that would be considered unacceptable by contemporary standards. These include the fact that Dr. Dillard Workman, who was Adams' medical associate, was Ruby McCollum's physician for her prenatal care of Adams' child by her, had actively campaigned for Adams during his senatorial race, testified to Ruby's sanity at the trial, conducted Adams' autopsy and testified to that autopsy during the murder trial.

Lake City resident Arthur Keith Black was the state's prosecutor during the first trial that led to McCollum's conviction. Huie reports that Black was an Adams family friend who handled the wrongful death case for Mrs. Adams, including presenting Lavergne Blue's forged will to him after Adams' death. Huie never implied that Black was a part of this forgery, only that he represented Dr. Adams' widow in her claim upon the lodge in the event of the death of its owner, Lavergne Blue. In a conversation documented by Huie, Blue denied ever signing the will, which was later determined to have been written by Adams in an apparent attempt to acquire Blue's lodge, a substantial property just west of Live Oak.

In November, 1980, Al Lee of the "Ocala Star Banner" interviewed Ruby McCollum at the rest home in Silver Springs, Florida where she had retired after leaving Chattahoochee. [Al Lee, "Memory of Murder Fades After 28 Years." (the "Ocala Star Banner", January 13, 1980).] In a side bar article in the same issue, Lee reports, "Keith Black of Lake City, the former state attorney who prosecuted Ruby McCollum on a first degree murder charge in 1952, was indicted in 1977 by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice in connection with alleged racketeering in the Live Oak-Lake City area." The racketeering referred to by Lee was bolita, the numbers game previously controlled by Sam McCollum, Ruby McCollum's husband. Lee also noted that Ruby McCollum's memory of the entire ordeal had faded. The State Mental Hospital at Chattahoochee was known for keeping its patients on Thorazine and giving electroshock therapy.

An excellent true story regarding life for mental patients in Chattahoochee, documenting the same period that Ruby McCollum was incarcerated, is entitled, "Chattahoochee," ["Chattahoochee." (Hemdale Film, released April 20, 1990).] and should be viewed by anyone interested in the treatment of mentally ill patients in the 1950s.

On May 23, 1992, at 4:45 a.m., Ruby died of a stroke at the New Horizon Rehabilitation Center, at the age of eighty-two, following the death of her beloved brother, Matt, by less than a year. [State of Florida, Office of Vital Statistics. Death Certificate No. 92-057582, local file No. 1238.] She now lies buried beside him, surrounded by a grove of moss-draped live oak trees, in the cemetery behind the Hopewell Baptist Church, north of Live Oak, on the Florida Sheriff Boy's Ranch Road.

Ruby was embalmed in Live Oak by Charles Hall, who also cast the concrete headstone that marks her grave. Her name was entered on her death certificate as “Ruby McCollumn,” and her burial place as a “rural cemetery” near Ocala. The McCollum name was often misspelled, as seen in Hurston’s rendering of the name as “McCollom.”

The “rural cemetery” referred to on the official birth certificate issued by the State of Florida Office of Vital Statistics is actually Union Cemetery for "coloreds" in Zuber, Ruby’s birthplace. Today, Zuber is nothing but a crossroads with a convenience store, and the cemetery is located off a road paved with crushed pink granite, down a winding stretch of overgrown, barely passable farm trail. The Jackson family portion of the graveyard contains the remains of Ruby’s parents and other relatives, including Sonja, her second-born, who died of a heart attack.

Of particular interest to those who have explored this story, whether it be Zora Neale Hurston or William B. Huie who covered McCollum's trial and appeal, or whether it is scholars trying to examine the story in its historical perspective, the one continuous thread in their investigations is the code of silence hovering over this story from its inception to over some half a century after it occurred. In her dissertation, for example, Tammy Evans writes that her aim is, "to exemplify how dominant power and capital structures in the early 1950s South worked to protect southern myths regarding race, class, and gender, and, more specifically, how these longtime myths contributed to the fate of one woman." [Evans, Tammy. "The Silencing of Ruby McCollum: Race Class, and Gender in the South." (Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2006). p xxi.] Evans explores the importance of these myths in preserving a particular version of history that can be embraced by the community and contribute to their pride, rather than a history that can be documented by facts.

References

Bibliography

*Diaz, John A. "Woman Chased by Mob After Slaying Doctor: Murder of White Medico Touches Off Powder Keg." (the "Pittsburgh Courier", August 16, 1952)
* Ellis, C. Arthur (Jr.). "State of Florida vs. Ruby McCollum, Defendant" (Morrisville, N.C.: Lulu Press, 2007). ISBN 978-1-4303-1150-8.
* Evans, Tammy. "The Silencing of Ruby McCollum: Race, Class, and Gender in the South" (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 2006). ISBN 0-8130-2973-2.
*Davis, Thulani. "Everybody's Ruby" (Samuel French, Inc., 2000, 79 pages). ISBN:0573627126.
*Huie, William Bradford, "Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail" (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1956). Second Edition (title change only): "The Crime of Ruby McCollum." (London: Jarrolds Publishers, 1957). Third Edition: "The Crime of Ruby McCollum." (London: Grey Arrow, 1959). Fourth Edition (revised and updated): "Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail." (New York: Signet Books, 1964).
*Hurston, Zora Neale. Series of articles covering the trial. (the "Pittsburgh Courier", October, 1952-January, 1953). Also, "The Life Story Of Ruby McCollum" (the "Pittsburgh Courier", Jan-March, 1953).
*Unknown Author, "Case of Ruby McCollum." ("Time." October 25, 1954).