McCollum, Ruby, approximately 1915-

Defendant.

In 1952, Ruby McCollum, a black woman shot and killed her white lover, prominent Live Oak, Florida, physician C. Leroy Adams. Her subsequent conviction and death sentence (1954) were later overturned by the Florida Supreme Court, but she was declared mentally incompetent and incarcerated for many years in a mental hospital. Zora Neal Hurston covered the trial for the Pittsburgh Courier and collaborated with William Bradford Huie whose book, Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail.

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