In August of 1952, a wealthy black woman shot and killed Dr. Clifford Leroy Adams.
An all-white jury convicted her, but she was not given the death penalty for reasons of insanity — she was addicted to drugs at the time.
Ruby McCollum claimed Dr. Adams had forced her into a long sexual relationship that ended in an unwanted child. Since the trial, many have argued that McCollum and Adams were in a consensual relationship and that the drugs had pushed McCollum into insanity.
But McCollum may not have injected the substance herself and may have instead been drugged by Adams so he could take advantage of her.
A new documentary, “You Belong to Me,” examines the case anew with decades of research and family interviews. William Bradford Huie’s book The Crime of Ruby McCollum sparked the documentary, though in the book’s telling, the relationship was consensual and the murder the result of insanity sparked by drug addiction.
The murder case itself is murky at best. During the Jim Crow era, at a time when the KKK ruled and lynchings were common, McCollum was convicted by an all-white, all-male jury. Prosecutors said she killed Adams over a $116 bill, even though she was the wife of a wealthy gambling businessman and had $1,800 with her in her purse at the time.
“I could not wrap my head around the story, that a woman of Ruby McCollum’s stature … would see anything that could be a good future for her to have a sexual relationship with a white doctor,” the documentary’s producer, Jude Hagin, said.
McCollum had told the jury that she felt pressured to do as Adams asked: “I was just so worried, I had to either yield or maybe die, I suppose that was what would happen.”
McCollum received drug injections from Adams as well, though it is unclear if she asked for the injections or if Adams gave them to her himself.
The film’s research also uncovered a darker said of Dr. Adams, who had been renowned for helping the poor. McCollum had testified that Adams had a friend deliver her baby and that he never gave her a birth certificate because he wanted to keep the baby secret while he was running for office. Records also indicate that he forged letters of recommendation so he could go to medical school.
While the documentary does not definitively conclude the case, it does shed new light on a dark time in the Florida city’s history. Hagin hopes the documentary may one day become a feature film, and if it does, James Brolin has already signed on to direct.