Crimes of the Centuries · Amber Hunt and Audioboom

Silenced in the South: Ruby McCollum and the Murder of Dr. Adams

May 26, 2025·43 min·4 clips

Ruby McCollum reveals Dr. Adams raped her in 1948, starting years of sexual assaults that led to her breaking point.

This episode of Crimes of the Centuries, hosted by journalist Amber Hunt, examines the 1952 murder of prominent white physician Dr. C. Leroy Adams by his Black patient, Ruby McCollum, in Live Oak, Florida. Hunt explores how this sensational case exposed the brutal racial and sexual dynamics of the Jim Crow South. The narrative details Ruby McCollum driving to Dr. Adams's segregated office on a Sunday morning with her two young children and $1,900 in cash. Witness testimony describes an argument over a medical bill before Ruby shot Dr. Adams four times with a .32 caliber pistol. Ruby McCollum was the wife of Sam McCollum, the "Bolita King" who ran an illegal but tolerated numbers racket, making them the wealthiest Black family in northern Florida. Dr. Adams was a respected, six-foot-two physician, a state senate candidate, a Ku Klux Klan member, and the father of Ruby's youngest daughter, Loretta. Ruby testified that Dr. Adams began sexually assaulting her during a 1948 house call, initiating a four-year pattern of rape she felt powerless to report. Author Zora Neale Hurston covered the trial for the Black-owned Pittsburgh Courier, reporting details white newspapers omitted, including Ruby's testimony about the assaults. The all-white, all-male jury was never allowed to hear Ruby's full story, as Judge Hal W. Adams sustained 38 consecutive objections from the prosecution when her attorney tried to question her about the doctor's motives. Ruby McCollum was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, a verdict later overturned on a technicality by the Florida Supreme Court. During a second trial, she was declared insane and committed to the Florida State Hospital, where she may have undergone electroshock therapy. Investigative journalist William Bradford Huie later reported that Dr. Adams was running an insurance scam and had allegedly planned to murder another local man, Laverne Blue, to claim his estate. Huie controversially wrote that Ruby was "just as guilty" as the doctor and saw no great injustice in her potential execution. Ruby McCollum's courtroom testimony is considered the first time in American history a Black woman accused a white man of sexual assault in open court. The episode has a journalistic and narrative tone, meticulously reconstructing historical events through court records, documentaries, and contemporary reports. It is conversational yet educational, presenting multiple perspectives from townspeople, scholars, and journalists of the era. Listeners interested in forgotten chapters of American history, the intersections of race, gender, and justice, and true crime with deep social context will find this episode compelling. Those seeking a straightforward crime story without complex historical analysis might find the detailed social examination less engaging.

As heard by us

A Florida murder case that widens into race, fear, and history.

Ruby McCollum's killing of Dr. Clifford Leroy Adams gives this story its center, but the surrounding world matters just as much. The segregated Live Oak setting, the two waiting rooms, the two treatment rooms, the fear of reprisals, and the 57-mile convoy to Rayford State Prison…

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Why you'd press play

A Florida murder case that opens into race, fear, and power in 1952 Live Oak.

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