Ruby McCollum (August 31, 1909 – May 23, 1992), born Ruby Jackson was a wealthy married Black woman in Live Oak, Florida, who was charged in 1952 for first-degree murder for killing Dr. C. Leroy Adams, a White doctor and state senator–elect. She testified as to their sexual relationship and his paternity of her child. The judge prohibited her from recounting more details of her allegations of abuse by Adams. She was convicted and sentenced to death for his murder by an all-white jury.
The case was covered widely in the United States press (including a report written by Zora Neale Hurston for the Pittsburgh Courier, the first for a newspaper outside Florida), and was covered by international papers, as well. Her case was appealed and overturned on technical grounds by the state supreme court.
Before the second trial, McCollum's attorney entered an insanity plea on his client's behalf. She was examined and found mentally incompetent to stand trial, and was committed to the (Florida State Hospital) at Chattahoochee. In 1974 her attorney obtained her release under the Baker Act, as she was not considered a danger to herself or others.
In the 21st century, McCollum and her case have received renewed attention, with multiple books and four documentary films exploring the issues of race, class, sexual violence, gender, and corruption in local politics.
Early life Ruby Jackson was born in 1909 to Gertrude and William Jackson in Zuber, Florida. She was the second of their seven children and the first daughter. The children attended local segregated schools. Ruby went to a private school for Black children, Fessenden Academy. She trained to work as a teacher.
Marriage and family In 1931 Jackson married Sam McCollum. They moved to Nyack, New York, north of New York City, as part of the Great Migration of rural black people out of the South in the early 20th century. The couple had three children: Sam Jr., Sonja, and Kay."Misfortune Follows McCollum Principals", Ocala Star-Banner, January 13, 1980, accessed March 18, 2014 McCollum later said that her youngest child, Loretta, who was born in Live Oak, was fathered by C. Leroy Adams, a White doctor, during a forced relationship.
Business activities
In 1934, the couple relocated to the area of Fort Myers, Florida. Sam's brother, Buck McCollum, had gained considerable wealth managing a bolita gambling business. Sam went into business with him and was reported to be a player in North Florida crime, including gambling and liquor sales. These were illegal in the county, but flourished because of payoffs to local law enforcement. In a related sideline, the McCollums also sold burial policies and owned a local funeral home. By the 1940s and early 1950s, the McCollums were reported to have "amassed a fortune" from their criminal and legitimate business activities.
Sam and Ruby owned a "stately, two-story home" in Live Oak, Florida, a small town of 4,000 people. They acquired it from the prior bolita operator in the county when he was run out of town. Ruby drove a new Chrysler automobile each year. The McCollums owned several "jooks" that served illegal liquor and obtained money from the juke boxes, and had a farm outside of town with the largest tobacco allotment in Florida. The McCollums also owned a farm near Lake City, where Sam stocked fields with quail for hunting with his bird dogs.
Ruby was reportedly one of the wealthiest Blacks in northern Florida. The couple was considered financially successful and well respected in the community, where they contributed liberally to their church. By 1952 their son and oldest child, Sam Jr., had started college at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles)."Production begins on "You Belong to Me," feature of Ruby McCollum's life story", Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, University of Florida, August 19, 2013, accessed March 18, 2014
Background Florida was a segregated state where Black people had been essentially disenfranchised since the turn of the century by a constitution and laws that imposed poll taxes, literacy tests, and other barriers to voter registration and Black voting. Those African Americans excluded from voters' lists could not serve on juries and they were generally excluded from any political office. Following Reconstruction, the White Democrat-dominated state legislature had passed a new constitution and laws to create legal racial segregation and Jim Crow conditions. African-Americans bore second-class status until passage in the mid-1960s of civil rights legislation.
By 1952, black men could legally serve on juries, but participation was restricted due to the barriers to voting, as noted above. In addition, attorneys could reject black jurors through challenges ostensibly other than race.
The jury in the McCollum case consisted of all white males, according to the transcript of the trial published by C. Arthur Ellis, Jr. as State of Florida vs. Ruby McCollum, Defendant.
The power structure of White men taking sexual advantage of Black women dated to the antebellum years, when African Americans were enslaved throughout the South. Into the 20th century, powerful White men would insist on what was called "paramour rights", forcing Black women into sexual relations.The Silencing of Ruby McCollum: Race, Class, And Gender in the South, by Jacqueline Jones Royster. University Press of Florida, 2006. "Paramour Rights" murder trial & reaction. The assumption that powerful White men could take Black women as sexual partners, regardless of the women's desire or social status, continued to underlie 20th-century relations.
From the late 17th century, Virginia and other colonies established laws defining social status in the colonies. Under the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, they ruled that children of enslaved mothers were also born into slavery, regardless of their paternity. This was in contrast to English common law, in which the fathers of children established their social status and had financial and legal responsibility for them.
Dr. C. Leroy Adams had a reputation as a "benevolent and popular doctor who administered to the needy." According to Ruby McCollum, she was treated by him for stress when she was admitted to Brewster, a hospital for African Americans. She reportedly returned to the hospital at times that coincided with the death of Adams's son and with his election to the state senate. Before this, he had come to her house and sexually assaulted her. He continued to press her into a sexual liaison. She became pregnant and he refused to enable her to get an abortion. Their daughter Loretta was born in 1950. McCollum said she had tried repeatedly to end the relationship, but Adams refused.
In 1952 Adams was elected to the state senate. His associate, Dr. Dillard Workman, campaigned for him. Adams was considered to have a potential political future as governor.
Workman was Ruby McCollum's physician when she was pregnant with Adams's child. He performed the autopsy on Adams and testified to McCollum's sanity during her initial trial.
It was discovered years after his death, by a team researching a documentary film, that Adams had forged recommendations that supported his admission to medical school. He also later admitted that he falsified information regarding tenants at his farm in order to receive more government funding."Silenced: The Story of Ruby McCollum", 28 January 2015
Shooting of Dr. C. Leroy Adams On August 3, 1952, Ruby McCollum met Dr. C. Leroy Adams, a white physician and state senator-elect, in his office in Live Oak, Florida. She had driven there with her two young children. She later admitted that she shot him four times with a revolver, and said it was because he would not agree to leave her alone. She said that over a period of years, he had repeatedly forced her to submit to sex and to bear his child.Wadsworth, Louie. "Dr. Adams Slain by Negress," Suwannee Democrat, August 8, 1952 She claimed that her two-year-old daughter, Loretta, was fathered by him.
Later, researchers found that McCollum had left notes and letters that said Adams had sexually abused her, and that she was pregnant with another child by him when she killed him. She also said that Adams had taken part in her husband Sam's "illegal gambling operation." An employee at the doctor's office later described having seen the doctor accept "large deliveries of cash in examination rooms."
After Adams's murder, McCollum was arrested and taken to the state prison 50 miles away. This was temporary and for her protection, according to contemporary accounts. Given what is known, the purpose for sending her so far from her home is unknown.
The day after her arrest, her husband Sam died of a heart attack in Zuber, Florida, where he had taken their four children for safekeeping with Ruby's mother. Charles Hall, the local undertaker at the time, when interviewed in the early 21st century, said that Sam "knew his life was over" when his wife shot Adams. Hall claimed that Sam purposely overdosed on his heart medication and died after knowing his kids were safe with Ruby's mother.
Trial McCollum was defended by Frank Cannon, a District Attorney from Jacksonville, Florida. The case was prosecuted by state's attorney Keith Black, and presided over by Florida's Third Circuit Court judge, Judge Hal W. Adams. (He was not related to the doctor, but had been an honorary pallbearer at his funeral).
The all-white jury included some patients of the late Dr. Adams. Zora Neale Hurston, a black anthropologist and author, was on a free-lance assignment from the Pittsburgh Courier. She was the first person from a newspaper outside Florida to report on the trial. She was required to sit upstairs in the segregated gallery of the courtroom. Her notability and striking coverage helped McCollum's case gain a national and international audience.
In front of an all-white male jury, McCollum testified that Adams raped her in her home and in his office (located immediately across the street from the courthouse), and that he insisted that she bear his child. The court prevented her defense attorney from presenting more complete information about their relationship. All of Cannon's efforts to introduce the doctor's pattern of repeated physical abuse of her at the office were objected to by the prosecutor, and most objections were upheld by the judge. She said that Adams had struck her repeatedly the day of the murder, and they struggled. Essentially, McCollum was silenced in court regarding additional testimony that would have established mitigating circumstances.
According to Zora Neale Hurston, who reported on the trial for the Pittsburgh Courier: Ruby was allowed to describe how, about 1948, during an extended absence of her husband, she had, in her home, succumbed to the sexual assault. 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.
The judge also imposed a gag order on McCollum, preventing the press from interviewing her. Hurston wrote that defense attorney Frank Cannon, frustrated by the court's upholding the state prosecuting attorney's objections to most of the evidence he tried to introduce about McCollum's relationship with Dr. Adams, turned to the judge and said, "May God forgive you, Judge Adams, for robbing a human being of life in such a fashion."Zora Neale Hurston, quoted in William B. Huie. Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1956), pp 99-100.