Ruby Mc Collum - Coverage and Impact

Coverage and Impact

Zora Neale Hurston covered the trial for the Pittsburgh Courier from the fall of 1952 through the early months of 1953, and subsequently wrote a series of articles for the Courier entitled, "The Life Story of Ruby McCollum", which ran in the early months of 1953 following McCollum's conviction. In her reporting for the Courier, Hurston wrote that McCollum's trial sounded the death knell for "paramour rights".

Hurston, who was not present at the appeal or the second trial, collaborated with William Bradford Huie, who, after investigating the story and attending the appeal and second trial, published Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail. Huie's book is the principal account of the case.

In Huie's book, Hurston's notes on the first trial—at which Huie was not present—include the fact that the jury was made up entirely of white men. Hurston also noted that "Ruby was allowed to describe how, about 1948, during an extended absence of her husband, she had, in her home, submitted to the doctor. 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."

Hurston continues that Frank Cannon, frustrated by the persistence of the state prosecuting attorney, turned to the judge and said, "May God forgive you, Judge Adams, for robbing a human being of life in such a fashion."

C. Arthur Ellis, Jr., Ph.D., who published the entire transcript of the trial, stated that some incidents in the case would be considered unacceptable by contemporary standards. These include that Dr. Dillard Workman, who was Adams' medical associate, was also Ruby McCollum's physician for her prenatal care of Adams' child by her, had actively campaigned for Adams during his senatorial race, testified to McCollum's sanity at the trial, conducted Adams' autopsy and testified to that autopsy during the murder trial.