As
July draws to a close it is time once again for the latest “History’s Rich With
Mysteries” column by Texas author Earl Staggs. This time he looks at the case
of Ruby McCollum. What happened is just stunning.
HISTORY’S RICH WITH MYSTERIES
When I look at the past, I find
stories about people which fascinate me, particularly those in which there is a
curious mixture of fact, legend, and mysterious uncertainty. In this series of
articles, I want to explore some of those stories. I think of them as mysteries
swaddled in legend. While truth is always desired in most things, truth easily
becomes staid and boring. Legend, on the other hand, forever holds a hint of
romanticism and an aura of excitement borne of adventure, imagination and, of
course, mystery.
RUBY
McCOLLUM - Justice in Black and White
by Earl Staggs
On Sunday
morning, August 3, 1952, in Live Oak, a farming town in north Florida,
forty-three-year-old Ruby McCollum, the wealthiest black woman in town, entered
the office of Dr. C. Leroy Adams, a prominent white physician, and shot him
dead.
She was
born Ruby Jackson in Zuber, Florida, in 1909, and in 1931, married Sam
McCollum, the operator of a large and prosperous gambling enterprise. Their
holdings grew to include a number of bars which sold illegal liquor and
flourished by paying off local law enforcement officers. They also owned
several large farms in the state and a local funeral home. They settled into a
large two-story home in Live Oak, a small town with a population of about 4,000
people, where they raised four children, were well-respected in the community,
and contributed liberally to their church.
Ruby's
trial that year was a sensational one widely covered in the United States
press, as well as by international papers. The prosecuting attorney claimed
Ruby shot him when they argued about a disputed bill.
Ruby
testified that Dr. Adams had been forcing her to have sex with him for several
years, that he was the biological father of her youngest child, and she was
pregnant by him for the second time. She said she fired at the doctor in
self-defense when he attacked her.
She was
not allowed to say much more than that. Her testimony was continuously
interrupted by objections made by the prosecutor and sustained by the judge.
The jury, made up entirely of white men, did not learn from her that she was
torn between her husband who threatened to shoot her if she had another white
baby and Dr. Adams who threatened to shoot her if she aborted his child.
Zora
Neale Hurston, a noted black journalist, novelist, and anthropologist who
covered the case for The Pittsburgh Courier, maintained that Ruby's trial was
the first time in history that a certain unwritten but widely recognized
antebellum law was called into question. Known as “Paramour Rights,” it gave
white men the right to a "Negro" woman even if she was married and
placed no responsibility on the white man for support of the women or their
offspring. As hard as it may be to believe, it was a common practice since
before the Civil War and it continued well into the 20th Century.
Ms
Hurston, who was forced to observe the trial from the second-floor gallery
reserved for black people, wrote, "I had the feeling that the trial was a
conspiracy of silence. The real story took place behind a curtain of
secrecy."
Staid
members of the Segregationist South considered the relationship between Ruby
and Dr. Adams nothing more than an instance of Paramour Rights rather than one
of sexual abuse and certainly not something that needed to be discussed in
public.
Ruby served as bookkeeper for her husband's varied
businesses, and many prominent members of the white community knew their names
were recorded in her ledgers, along with a record of "no-interest loans”
from Sam McCollum.
Then there were rumors about Dr. Adams having his hand in
Sam’s gambling operation, serving as the connection with the white
establishment which provided immunity for Sam’s illegal gambling and liquor
operations in Suwannee County.
None of these issues were brought out in the one-sided
trial. From the time she was arrested and throughout the trial, Ruby was placed
under a gag order by the judge and was not allowed to speak with anyone except
her attorneys and immediate family.
On
December 20, 1952, Ruby McCollum was convicted of first degree murder and
sentenced to death in the electric chair.
On
appeal, her case was overturned by
the State Supreme Court on July 20, 1954. Prior to the second trial, however,
she was examined and declared mentally incompetent to stand trial. She was
committed to the state mental hospital at Chattahoochee, Florida, an
institution known for mis-treatment such as keeping patients on Thorazine and
giving electroshock therapy.
She remained there for
twenty years. In 1974, her attorney obtained her release under the Baker Act as
she was not considered a danger to herself or others.
In
November, 1980, Ruby was interviewed at a rest home in Silver Springs, Florida.
As is common after electroshock therapy,
her memory of the entire ordeal with regard to Dr. Adams and her trial for his
murder had faded. (The process of
electroshock therapy as it was used in those days was well-known to produce the
side effect of memory impairment.)
On May 23, 1992, Ruby McCollum died of a stroke at the at the age of eighty-two. She was buried beside her brother who died a year earlier in a cemetery behind the New Hope Baptist Church near Ocala, Florida.
On May 23, 1992, Ruby McCollum died of a stroke at the at the age of eighty-two. She was buried beside her brother who died a year earlier in a cemetery behind the New Hope Baptist Church near Ocala, Florida.
While
it cannot be denied that Ruby took a man's life, we can look back now and
reflect on all she suffered. We can consider the mitigating circumstances of her
actions and her inability to tell all of the details of her story in court. She
was robbed of the opportunity a second trial might have afforded by being
conveniently declared mentally ill and institutionalized where her memory was
erased.
Others
have looked at the facts of Ruby's ordeal and called it a landmark case with a
positive influence on the civil rights movement. Never before had a “Negress”
talked in open court about her sexual abuse by a white man and being forced to
bear his children. They point to the fact that her case was the first ever to
bring the so-called “Paramour Rights” issue into the open. They can say her
case sounded the death knell of that last vestige of slavery in this country
which provided no protection for a black woman against rape by a white man.
While
some people think along those lines, I find myself more concerned about the
horrible subjugation and deprecation Ruby and certainly thousands of other
black American women had to endure during the many decades Paramour Rights were
practiced in this country.
Earl
Staggs © 2016
Earl Staggs earned all Five Star reviews for his novels MEMORY OF A MURDER and JUSTIFIED ACTION and has twice received a Derringer Award for Best
Short Story of the Year. He served as
Managing Editor of Futures Mystery
Magazine, as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars. He invites
any comments via email at earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net
He also invites you to visit his blog
site at http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com to learn more about his novels and stories.
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