Caught Between Two Guns

C. Arthur Ellis Jr. PhD

Description

On a hot Florida summer day in August, 1952, Ruby McCollum, the wealthy African-American wife of Suwannee County’s Bolita King, murdered Dr. C. LeRoy Adams, a beloved white physician and recently elected state senator.
The sensational murder trial was widely covered in newspapers ranging from the New York Times to The Times in London, and was the first of its kind since 1855.
Now the story of a forbidden interracial love affair gone wrong is recounted by an author who was a neighbor to the McCollum family and delivered by Dr. Adams.
On a hot Florida summer day in August, 1952, Ruby McCollum, the wealthy African-American wife of Suwannee County’s Bolita King, murdered Dr. C. LeRoy Adams, a beloved white physician and recently elected state senator.
The sensational murder trial was widely covered in newspapers ranging from the New York Times to The Times in London, and was the first of its kind since 1855.
Now the story of a forbidden interracial love affair gone wrong is recounted by an author who was a neighbor to the McCollum family and delivered by Dr. Adams.
Dr. Ellis’ odyssey to discover the truth behind the murder began with locating the lost transcript of the trial—which was both manually transcribed and wire recorded. He then published an annotated copy to discredit statements by some scholars that McCollum was not allowed to testify in her own defense.
In the Afterword of this book, Ellis now addresses McCollum’s most telling statements to her attorneys— “I was caught between two guns,” and “I don’t know whether I did right or whether I did wrong”—and proposes an intriguing moral alternative to societally defined concepts of “right” and “wrong” for African-Americans who lived in the Jim Crow South.

Sujets

• Ethnic Studies
• Black Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Jim Crow laws
• Ruby McCollum
• African American
• American
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Jim Crow

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 28 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665739184
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 15 Mo

Extrait

CAUGHT BETWEEN TWO GUNS


THE TRUE CRIME STORY OF RUBY MCCOLLUM





C. ARTHUR ELLIS, JR., PHD









Copyright © 2023 C. Arthur Ellis, Jr., PhD.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.



Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Oil painting illustrations executed by Chinese artist collective under artistic direction of Min Zhang, based upon original sketches and photographs by C. Arthur Ellis, Jr., Ph.D.
Edited by Michael Carr

ISBN: 978-1-6657-3919-1 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3918-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023903136



Archway Publishing rev. date: 02/27/2023



CONTENTS
Preface
Part I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
1947
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
1948
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
1949
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
1950
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
1951
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
1952
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Part II
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Part III
1953
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three

Epilogue
Afterword
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Acknowledgments










Downtown Live Oak, Florida
1952



PREFACE
August 4, 1952. It’s a hot high noon on a Sunday in my rural North Florida hometown of Live Oak during the peak of tobacco season. Except for cars lining Ohio Avenue in front of the Methodist church, the main north-south highway through town is empty.
As the courthouse clock strikes 12, a two-toned blue Oldsmobile with a showroom shine passes the church, then the Suwannee Hotel, to make a right turn into the alley behind a two-story, white-washed brick office building. The car slows to a stop in front of a hand lettered sign on a weathered screen door—Dr. C. LeRoy Adams, M.D. Colored Entrance.
A short, pregnant African-American female in her early forties in a tan dress with matching Chanel handbag and Naturalizer shoes gets out of the car, enters the doctor’s office, walks past several women fanning themselves in the colored waiting area, finds the doctor alone in a white treatment room, and demands an abortion. After he refuses and threatens to shoot her if she seeks an abortion out of town, she pulls a .32 Smith and Wesson out of her purse and fires two shots toward his back as he turns to flee the room. One bullet hits him between the shoulder blades and drops him to the floor. Calmly stepping over his body lying face down in a pool of blood, she fires another shot pointblank into his back, then leaves the office behind several women screaming, “Help! Police! Murder!” Their cries are drowned out by the organ’s loud recessional floating through the open stainedglass windows of the Methodist church.
Afterwards, the nationally distributed Pittsburgh Courier retained Zora Neale Hurston to cover the high-profile murder of a white physician recently elected to the Florida state senate by Ruby McCollum, a woman the local Suwannee Democrat referred to in the headline as a nameless “Negress.”
Aside from witnessing McCollum’s salacious testimony from the colored balcony during the trial, Hurston unearthed an illegal gambling racquet known as “bolita,” with Dr. Adams heading the operation in the white community and the McCollums heading the operation in the colored community.
Hurston’s May 2, 1953 article ended with a teaser announcing her next installment, which never appeared due to a disagreement with editor Sam Nunn over payment for her work. Instead, Nunn replaced the article Hurston promised for the May 9 issue with the column, ‘Ruby! Good or Bad?”
Nunn breathed a sigh of relief when the distraction worked. Letters to the editor poured in. Some were convinced that McCollum had been framed for the murder by the sheriff who wanted Adams out of the way so he could be the bolita kingpin in the white community; others laid the blame squarely on her shoulders. Still others applauded her courage in standing up to a white man who threatened to kill her if she aborted his second child while her husband threatened to kill her if she did not.
The question of whether Ruby’s desperate action was morally justified or not, given her circumstances and the time in which she lived, is still debated by scholars.
Now readers have the opportunity to read the story for themselves, recounted from my perspective as someone who was delivered by Dr. Adams, grew up as a neighbor to the McCollums, and knew all of the characters.
In the Afterword, I use my own memories of the case, as well as primary and secondary sources, to evaluate Ruby’s dilemma within a completely different moral construct that dismisses the question of “right” or “wrong.”
C. Arthur Ellis, Jr., Ph.D.



PART I






CHAPTER ONE
Christmas Eve, 1946, found the McCollum household filled with the sounds of holiday music and sparkling laughter. Spicy fragrances of gingerbread cookies and percolating coffee mingled with the fresh scent of evergreen boughs to create the timeless essence of Christmas.
In front of the fireplace, a giant slice of fruitcake sat invitingly on the coffee table next to a glass of milk, awaiting Santa’s visit. A sprig of mistletoe dangling from the chandelier completed the setting for romantic gazing into the lingering embers later in the evening, after the children had fallen asleep.
At the foot of the staircase, Sam, a tall, thin, dark-skinned man in his early forties, bent down to pick up Kay in her pink flannel pajamas so she could put a smiling celluloid angel atop the Christmas tree. “There!” she announced proudly, pleased to see the angel looking down on the boughs of haphazardly hung ornaments and strands of colorful lights.
Sam Jr., sporting a Santa Claus outfit and a white cotton beard, finished anchoring the chains of red and green construction paper to the corner of the ceiling and descended the stepladder.
Kay pursed her lips and pointed a demanding finger at her brother. “Santa, I want my presents!”
“Ho, ho, ho! Not until I get my fruitcake and milk,” Santa bargained, gesturing toward the coffee table.
Kay crossed her arms to mount her best pout. “Daddy! Make Santa give me my presents!”
Sam grinned, his intense gray eyes sparkling as he gave her a peck on the cheek and lowered her to the floor. “Not until tomorrow mornin’, baby doll, bright and early when Mr. Sunshine comes dancin’ through your bedroom window—that’s when you’ll get your presents.”
“Promise?” Kay asked, her big brown eyes twinkling with a six-year-old’s sense of delight and wonder.
Sam crossed his heart and bent down to give her a hug. “You know that Daddy always keeps his promises.”
Kay kissed her father on the cheek, happy with the compromise.
Across from the expansive living room, the dining room table was draped with a cream lace tablecloth and set with gold-plated flatware, gold-rimmed Lenox china, and crystal stemware. In the center of the table, a spray of red and white carnations with green candles furnished the crowning touch.
On the mahogany buffet, a pair of cut crystal vases filled with American Beauty roses flanked a bowl of fresh fruit, all of it set aglow by the dining room chandelier’s reflection in the gilt mirror.
Ruby, wearing a bright poinsettia-print apron around her matronly waist, entered from the kitchen, the spring-hi