Resurrecting Ruby

On August 3, 1952, in Live Oak, Florida, a Southern town of 4,000 people, Ruby McCollum shot and killed her lover, Dr. C. LeRoy Adams. McCollum was a 43 year old married Black woman and Adams was a prominent white physician. Her trial rivaled some of our modern legal circuses. Renowned writer Zora Neale Hurston was dispatched by the Pittsburgh Courier to cover the McCollum trial. Today, the memory of this incident has faded from public consciousness. In this zine, Victoria Law describes the case. Also included are Zora Neale Hurston’s impressions of the trial. Resurrecting Ruby contextualizes Ruby’s story within a legacy of how Black women have been unfairly treated within U.S. society. It raises the question of whether Ruby’s actions were justified as self-defense and asks if she might have been criminalized for survival. The publication was designed by Neta Bomani, the cover art was created by Rachel Marie Crane-Williams, and Kayla LeGrand provided research support.

Victoria Law is an author and freelance journalist focusing on the intersections of incarceration, gender and resistance. Her books include Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, Prison By Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reform, and “Prisons Make Us Safer” and 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration. Her writings about prisons and other forms of confinement have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Wired, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Village Voice, The Guardian, In These Times, HellGate and Truthout. She is a co-founder of Books Through Bars—NYC and the zine Tenacious: Art and Writings by Women in Prison.