Sam had a construction job in New York and he and his bride went North immediately. In the years to follow, they went many places together. In those years Ruby was almost completely happy. Her world had expanded marvelously and, by comparison, she handled plenty of money.

  From the very beginning, Sam brought home his money and handed it over to Ruby and she managed things. There was only one tiny dissatisfaction in Ruby’s love of her husband . . . Sam did not rule her enough.

  * * *

  THE GREAT tragedy that engulfed them in 1952 might have been avoided had Sam only understood Ruby better! From the beginning of their life together, the tiny seed of despisement had already been planted.

  Ruby proved a good and industrious wife. She was a wonderful cook, sewed well and kept a clean house. She was a very devoted mother. Without too much taste in clothes, she was neat and attractive in her clothes.

  But there, perhaps, she was wiser than most people thought. When a female body is too gaudily dressed, it is possible for the male mind to lose the connection.

  Ruby, brought up in a very religious home, knew even before she married Sam that, though he always worked, he gambled on the side and thus increased his income. Her femaleness is such that she accepted all parts of her man. She did not gamble herself, but she was with him in spirit.

  * * *

  IF SHE CUT him off to an extent from his own blood relatives, she also cut herself off from her own, in her loyalty to her man. Their families knew nothing of the relations between Sam and Ruby.

  Her attitude was such that even her stern, religious parents came to look upon Sam McCollum as the perfect husband and son-in-law. The young couple led their own life as they moved about from job to job, now Florida, now North again and back.

  What with his work and successful gambling, they were [h]oarding up money without as yet making any flash. Both were proud and happy about their son, Sam Jr., who came to them more than a year after they were married. He was born into a loving, affectionate, charmed family circle.

  (Continued next week.)

  MARCH 21, 1953

  The Life Story of Mrs. Ruby J. McCollum!

  The terrible years of World War II were about to burst upon the world when Sam and Ruby McCollum settled down in Live Oak, Fla. The coming of the McCollums was so quiet and inconspicuous that even Negro Live Oak was scarcely conscious that they were there. Privately, Ruby and Sam felt that they were now ready for bigger things.

  Looking over their new town one day, Ruby suddenly pointed and then said to her husband: “Look, Sam! There is my house!”

  Sam McCollum could neither understand her claim nor her excitement until she explained about the dream she had long years ago.

  “Know whose house that is?” Sam asked. “A fellow named Hopps built it and lives in it. A bolita banker and the biggest colored man in town, I hear.”

  “But it is mine,” Ruby told him with conviction, “I am going to live in that house.”

  Sam studied the large nine-room house on Ninth Street and chuckled.

  “Pretty high kick for a low cow, Ruby. That calls for a lot more cash money than we got. But, then maybe it’s a sign that I’m going to beat Hopps out at his own game. I’ve been looking around and listening a lot. Looks like Hopps has just been lucky and had nothing to buck but dumb guys. Maybe . . .”

  “Oh, you can take him, Sam. I’ve noticed in many ways how smart you are. Go ahead and put him out of our house.”

  * * *

  AND THE time came around . . . not so long after . . . when it was so. Sam McCollum went about things in a different way. He hung about places where he could learn things about Hopps’ methods of operation. He made connections among the Suwannee County authorities. He sat up nights and mapped out plans.

  The boastful, flashy bolita king, Hopps, had no fear of the quiet, inconspicuous Sam McCollum. He looked upon him as a country tin-horn and scorned him.

  Nevertheless, the time came shortly when Sam McCollum took over Hopps’ bolita empire, and in later years expanded it to dimensions which Hopps had never dreamed of.

  * * *

  PEOPLE IN Live Oak still tell of that night when Sam and Hopps sat down at a gambling table and fought with their skills for what was left. When the air cleared, Sam was master of the big house on Ninth Street, and Hopps—clean as a fish—walked out of town with his coat over his arm.

  Ruby McCollum, reared in the little four-room house at rural Martin, eight miles outside of Ocala, walked into the big house that a gambler had built, and which a gambler was again to own and occupy . . . and Ruby found the end to her dream!

  It is obvious that long years of “protection” had blinded Ruby McCollum to the gravity of her situation on the morning of Aug. 3, 1952, when she shot Dr. C. LeRoy Adams, prominent white doctor, to death.

  This conclusion is further verified when the sheriff, his deputy, and a state highway patrolman arrived at her home to make the arrest.

  “But I can’t go now,” Ruby told them, “there is nobody here to look after the children.”

  * * *

  SAM AND RUBY prospered. The weekly “take” grew to enormous proportions for a couple who had had so little cash in their early years. Ruby spent thousands in refurnishing and renovating the big house as time went on. However, they made no great splash in the manner done by most people who gain money in such a fashion.

  They were well dressed for Live Oak, but there was no flash, and no glitter of diamonds, no multiplicity of showy cars, no drinking and loud social affairs.

  But some changes had been made, nevertheless. The weekly “take” from bolita was always carried directly to the McCollums’ home by an employee of Sam’s and turned over to Ruby. She took care of all the tabulations and the tickets. It was she who wrote “give” on the tickets to be paid off, and “get” on the tickets still to be paid for on a play. She had charge of large amounts of cash.

  * * *

  THE McCOLLUMS bought some real estate, bought stock in the Central Life Insurance Company and made other investments, but Ruby held tightly on to the cash. This habit of hers led to some of the hatred shown her by some townspeople.

  “She was just too stingy for words. Close-fisted and stingy as all get-out. Wouldn’t even give God an honest prayer without snatching back amen,” some people said of her.

  For his high school education, Sam Jr. was sent to Fessenden where Ruby herself had gone, but otherwise no great outlay was made upon the boy. Ruby was laying it away to benefit her children in later years, when they would need it more.

  * * *

  BUT THINGS in the home were changing. Ruby was to find out that her husband was having brief—but numerous—outside affairs. She was not the kind to make any visible display to the world, but she was deeply hurt.

  Ruby accused Sam and warned him that money and power were going to his head. Sam’s retort was that she had the big house and had charge of all his money; she had servants and anything she wanted, so why should she care?

  But, though she never discussed it nor admitted it to her relatives or closest friends, Ruby was hurt. She knew that people in Live Oak noticed that never were she and Sam seen together. They even belonged to different churches; she was a Methodist and he a Baptist, though he seldom went to church. Ruby was ever at home, a tireless wife and mother, while Sam was around town night and day.

  * * *

  SAM WAS either blind to character traits and natural reactions, or he just didn’t care any longer how Ruby felt. From their past life, he could easily have been too sure of her. It is easily possible that he had analyzed her as caring more for material things than for him as a man.

  All right, she had the money packed away secretly in the house and allowed him little for spending money. She had what she craved, so he would go out and do as he pleased. Then they both would be satisfied—or, so it would seem.

  Live Oak says as a matter, of course, that Sam McCollum had “gangs of women,” though he put very little on them. That was because Ruby had a tight grip on the purse-strings. Almost without exception, Sam’s temporary “lights-of-love” were very young girls.

  * * *

  HE TOOK the pick of the new crop of young “friers” every year as they emerged and dropped them when the next crop of adolescents arrived. But not one of the number ever had anything to brag about after falling under the spell of McCollum’s great wealth, nothing, that is, but hope.

  And, women were offended at Sam McCollum for another reason: he was always bragging about the upright character of his wife. He gloated over other men:

  “I wouldn’t even put up with the kind of wife you got. My wife is always at home no matter when I get there. She’s home and acting like a wife ought to act. Clean in her living and looking after her husband and children. The kind of woman you got—”

  * * *

  “MRS. McCOLLUM must have something on Sam,” some women gritted their teeth in envy and malice, “the way he acts scared of her and lets her hold on to all that money and allowance him out what she wants him to have, which sure ain’t much, God knows.”

  So life went on with the McCollums fourteen years after they had married and through the birth of their third child and second daughter. They showed a solid front to the outside world. Neither of them would break the circle of loyalty, that is, by slighting remarks about each other. Both of them had their pride.

  (Continued next week.)

  MARCH 28, 1953

  The Life Story of Mrs. Ruby J. McCollum!

  YEARS before the birth of Sonya, the second daughter of Ruby and Sam McCollum, something had happened which destroyed the very texture of their union, though Sam, perhaps, never realized how serious it was.

  Naturally, Sam now had many connections and even friends among people who were connected with gambling in one way or another among both races. Sam decided to entertain a group of them in his home. His wife, Ruby, was then five months in pregnancy with their second child who was their first daughter. Young Sam Junior was then seven years old.

  The noisy group gathered in the McCollum home which Ruby had recently refurnished. This was the acid test! And in it both Sam and Ruby failed each other!

  The quiet, reserved Ruby did not care for these people. She did not even want them in her home to begin with. Sam, more self-confident than formerly, and possibly flushed with his new importance, forced his will upon his wife, knowing that it would not please her, but feeling that as a very capable bread-winner and master of his home, she should place his success before her feelings.

  Ruby said that in the course of the riotous evening too many of the guests drank too much liquor—incidentally, she never touched a drop in her life—and two or three of the overloaded guests callously vomited over her floor and furnishings.

  * * *

  SHE TOOK Sam aside and protested, demanding that he get that bunch out of the house. Sam did no such thing. Behind the closed door of their bedroom, Sam is said to have whipped her soundly and forced her to clean up the mess the guests had made.

  “For that I never forgave Sam McCollum,” Ruby once said. “Though his hard blows hurt me outwardly, luckily I was not injured internally and I had no miscarriage. He might have injured me and my unborn child, but for the time he seemed not to care.

  “Spiritually,” she continued, “the incident gave me a terrible fright. Always after that I felt insecure with Sam. I no longer felt myself to be the woman of his heart. A useful tool as a wife and mother, but no longer the mistress of his inner heart. It was a terrible shock.”

  An image—something sacred and precious—had fallen off the shelf in Ruby’s heart. After a few days they carried on as usual, but now they were different in Ruby’s concept.

  * * *

  SAM WAS a good provider and Ruby was a good wife and mother and that is just the way things rested for six years.

  Then Ruby found she was pregnant for the third time and she did not know whether she was glad or sorry. She loved children and motherhood. It was five years since she had had an infant to demand what she loved to give in that way, but try as she would, she could not recapture the old feeling of intimacy towards Sam.

  She was distressed that this was so. Her hope was that the birth of the child would bring it all back again. So, she looked forward to the birth of Sonya, her second daughter and third child.

  Sam was very pleased about the prospect of another child now. Perhaps he felt the slackening off of the old ties and hoped the same thing that Ruby did. However, he stayed away from home just as much as ever, which was no help at all.

  * * *

  WHEN HE did come home he talked about a new white friend he had just made. Dr. C. LeRoy Adams was Sam’s new white friend. Dr. Adams had moved to Live Oak in recent months and set up his practice of medicine.

  Oh—from all he could learn from both white and colored, he was a wonderful doctor, and Sam knew for himself that Dr. Adams was a fine friend to have. That is one of the anomalies of the Southland, this friendship which exists between individual whites and individual Negroes.

  And, besides, this Dr. Adams was accepting Negro patients, something Live Oak’s two other white doctors did not do. This Adams was very nice and friendly to Negroes. Sam made up his mind that he was not only going to bring Dr. Adams to the house to meet Ruby, he was going to place her under his care during the birth of their child.

  The hand of Fate had come into their lives.

  * * *

  SOMETHING electric passed between Ruby McCollum and Dr. Adams the very first time they met! A few minutes after the introduction in her living-room, Ruby happened to lift her eyes to find the big, handsome white man studying her with a look that she knew only too well. It was so intense it flustered her.

  Warm inside, to such an extent that her whole body seemed to be on fire, she excused herself with the excuse that she did not feel too well and went upstairs, leaving her husband and Dr. Adams laughing and talking below.

  Perhaps a quarter of an hour later, she heard them go outside to the driveway. She peeped out from behind the drapes and saw Dr. Adams stealing glances up at the second floor while he complimented Sam on his home and its surroundings.

  * * *

  THE BABY was delivered and did well, but, somehow, Ruby found her own recovery slow and fitful. One day she felt fine, then suddenly she felt as if she were about to die. She could not understand it. She had had little trouble after her first two babies. It was hard to understand, this new condition.

  She took the medicine faithfully that Dr. Adams prescribed, but, strangely, sometimes immediately afterwards she had that desperately sick, sinking feeling.

  Months went by this way, and Ruby began to feel very worried. Suppose she never got well and left her three children motherless? It was a terrible thought. She just must get well for their sake! And in her anxiety she had a revelation.

  * * *

  SOMETHING WAS laid bare that she had been hiding from herself for years. Her solicitations were for her children—not for her husband. She was not in love with Sam McCollum any longer!

  condition, Ruby summoned Dr. Adams to her home and told him of her peculiar sensations and her worry about her health.8

  He sat opposite her and took a long time to answer.

  With his big hands clasped and his elbows resting on his knees, Dr. Adams looked down at the floor for a while, then looked her squarely in the face and told her:

  “I can get you well if you will do as I tell you.”

  * * *

  SAM McCOLLUM’s neglect of her for the past few years had caused her to lose confidence in her power to sway men. She had come to feel that she no longer mattered to anybody that way.

  And now, this big, handsome, aggressive man restoring it to her again. She did not consider whether she wanted Dr. Adams or not. He was handing back to her a precious treasure that she had considered lost forever.

  She felt warm and grateful toward him. And this man was no trash out of the streets of Live Oak. This was an important, outstanding man, and—in addition—physically equipped to be desirable to many women.

  (Continued Next Week)

  APRIL 4, 1953

  The Life Story of Mrs. Ruby J. McCollum!

  LIVE OAK, Fla.—Looking at her three children after Dr. Adams left her home, Mrs. Ruby McCollum was overcome with shame. She would do penance . . . some very special act to punish herself. She’d pray to God to forgive her.

  Ruby went into her kitchen with the intention of preparing a very special meal to delight her husband and children. The telephone shrilled out . . . and as she picked it up, an unkind voice came to her through the receiver:

  “Ruby McCollum, you think you’re some big hen’s biddy, don’t you? Humpf! Riding ’round in your big shiny car, and holding on to Sam McCollum’s money tighter’n’ Dick’s hat-band. You may grab all his money, but I’m here to tell you that you ain’t got Sam! Right now he’s laying up with somebody young enough for your daughter, and he don’t . . .”

  Ruby flung the receiver back on the hook and turned away from the phone. She had no idea who her caller was, and never was she to know, but the malicious voice had done something to and for her. She felt less guilty right away. It called back her feeling of neglect over the last few years. She didn’t feel blameless, but she did feel a certain justification.

  Let Sam stay home more and she would never do it again.

  Then the phone rang again. This time it was Dr. Adams.

  The next afternoon was a riot of passion. She was wanted as she had always yearned to be wanted.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT in bed alone, Ruby thought things over. She saw the net closing around her. Did she want to escape? Well, yes, and, then again, no.

  But how, without bringing on the very disgrace to her children that she wished to avoid?