Ruby McCollum

Ruby McCollum, born Ruby Jackson (August 31, 1909 – May 23, 1992), was a wealthy married African-American woman in Live Oak, Florida, who is known for being arrested and convicted in 1952 for killing Dr. C. Leroy Adams, a prominent 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 her allegations of abuse by Adams.

She was sentenced to death for his murder by an all-white jury.

The sensational case was covered widely in the United States press (including a press report written by Zora Neale Hurston, as well as by international papers).

McCollum was subjected to a gag order.

Her case was appealed and overturned by the State Supreme Court.

Before the second trial, McCollum was examined and found mentally incompetent to stand trial.

She was committed to the state mental hospital (Florida State Hospital) at Chattahoochee, Florida.

Ruby Jackson was born in 1909 to Gertrude and William Jackson in Zuber, Florida.

She was the second child and first daughter among her six siblings.

They attended local segregated schools.

Ruby's parents recognized her intelligence and sent her to a private school, Fessenden Academy, where she excelled in bookkeeping.

In the 21st century, McCollum and her case received renewed attention, with books and four film documentaries exploring the issues of race, class, sexual violence, gender, and corruption in local politics from a modernist perspective.

McCollum's case is considered a landmark trial by these people in the struggle for civil rights as they believe she was the first black woman to testify against a white man's sexual abuse and paternity of their child.

It is considered to have helped change attitudes about the practice of "paramour rights”. McCollum's attorney, Releford McGriff, became part of a team who worked to change Florida's Jim Crow practice of selecting all-white juries. (Black people were still disenfranchised at that time and thus not eligible to serve as jurors, who were limited to voters.)

In 1931 Ruby Jackson married Sam McCollum.

They moved to Nyack, New York, as part of the Great Migration of rural black people out of the South in the early 20th century.

The couple had three children together: Sam Jr., Sonja, and Kay.

McCollum later said that a fourth and youngest, Loretta, was a biracial child fathered by Dr. C. Leroy Adams in a forced relationship.

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."

based on their criminal activities.

Sam and Ruby owned a "stately, two-story home," in Live Oak, Florida, a small town of 4,000 people, which they acquired from the prior bolita operator in the county when he was run out of town.

Ruby McCollum drove a new Chrysler automobile each year.

The McCollums owned several "Jooks" (juke joint), served illegal liquor, collected money from the juke boxes, and had a farm outside of town with the largest tobacco allotment in Florida.

It was at this time that Ruby developed an addiction to heroin.

The McCollums also owned a farm near Lake City, where Sam stocked fields with quail for hunting with his prized bird dogs.

Ruby McCollum was described as the wealthiest Black woman in town.The couple was considered financially successful and well respected in the community, where they contributed liberally to their church.

Their son and oldest child, Sam Jr., had started college at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) by 1952.

Florida was a segregated state where Black people had been essentially disenfranchised since the turn of the century amid passage of a constitution and laws imposing poll taxes, literacy tests, and other barriers to voter registration and Black voting.

The exclusion from voting meant that African-Americans could not serve on juries, and they were generally excluded from any political office.

The White Democrat-dominated state legislature following Reconstruction had passed laws to create legal segregation and Jim Crow.

By 1952, black men could serve on juries, but during the voir dire for McCollum's case, blacks generally shied away from jury duty, and only two black alternates in the McCollum case were chosen but never called to serve.

African-Americans were kept in second-class status until passage in the mid-1960s of civil rights legislation following their decades of activism and support from the national Democratic Party led by President Lyndon Johnson.

In 1974 her attorney, Frank Cannon, obtained her release under the Baker Act, as she was not considered a danger to herself or others.