“But Sam and Ruby McCollum wasn’t no bad pay neither. That’s how come I can’t see to my rest how come they got to fussing over her doctor’s bill and ended up in this killing-scrape. Everybody knows that them McCollums paid what they owed on the dot. They had it to pay with and they sure Lord paid. Everybody in Live Oak and Suwannee County will give ’em that. They never owed nobody.”

  Hints like that now and then gave away the code. Let you understand that they were play-acting in their savage denunciation of Ruby McCollum. The sprig of hyssop was in their hands and they were sprinkling the blood of the rascal lamb around their doorway so that the angel of death would pass over them.2 This was West Florida, and somehow the Negro population of Live Oak felt apprehensive.

  And inside the Court-house on this December day of the trial, a man and a woman came up the stairs to the galleries reserved for Negro spectators and took a seat next to me. The woman murmured for my benefit, “Don’t be surprised what might come off here.” They looked down the row of seats and the man said, “I hope no fool don’t go and block up that aisle.”

  “But you wouldn’t run off and leave me, honey, if something was to take place, would you?”

  “Not if you can keep up, baby.”

  The local White people felt no such timidity about physical violence. But fear was there. It stemmed from what the outside world would say about the trial, and hence the banning of the Press.

  “Ruby has killed a White man, and not only that, the most prominent White man in Suwannee County. She ought to die for that, and she’s going to die. You can’t let women go around killing up every man they take a notion to. We don’t want these newspaper men coming in here and printing lies about us. Ruby was just full of meanness, shooting Dr. Adams to death rather than to pay her doctor’s bill.”

  “We don’t have to believe a word that a woman says who will murder a good man because he sent her a bill for waiting on her. That baby of Ruby’s is not Dr. Adams’ child. Oh, it might look sort of bright-colored like some say it does, but it could be Sam McCollum’s like them other three. Sometimes babies are throw-backs, and take after their fore-parents, you know.”

  “Oh, we all recognize that Doc Adams got around right smart among the ladies, that woman in Lake City, this one and that one, was separated from his wife for years until he put in to run for the State Senate, but he never had anything to do with Ruby like that. She’s lying. She just hated to pay him that money she owed the man. A brutal murder without any excuse for it at all.”

  It was like a chant. The medical bill as a motive for the slaying was ever insisted upon and stressed. It was freely admitted by all that the McCollums had always been good pay. Paid what they owed with promptness every time. Yet, there was this quick and stubborn insistence that the medical bill, and that alone, could have been the cause of the murder. It was obviously a posture, but a posture posed in granite. There existed no other, let alone extenuating circumstances. This was the story, however bizarre it might appear to outsiders, and the community was sticking to it. The Press was discouraged from “confusing” the minds of the State and the nation by poking around Live Oak and coming up with some other loose and foolish notion.

  I sought and had more than one interview with Judge Hal Adams. My impression of the Judge who was to preside over this trial [was] as a man possessed of many substances marketable in the human bazaar. I found no fault with the broad black Stetson, the black string tie of a past century, his chewing tobacco, his witty turn of mind, nor yet his mouth full of colorful Southern idioms. To me, these were externals, and need not of necessity indicate his type of mind. How he conducted the trial was my yard-stick. We got along very well indeed.

  But naturally I was disappointed when he told me that he could not allow me to interview Ruby McCollum. I had been sent to Live Oak by the Pittsburgh Courier first and foremost to get an interview with the defendant in this case, and second, to report the case as it developed. But Judge Adams was not short and harsh with me in his refusal. He said that the very nature of the case made it advisable to deny access to Mrs. McCollum to the Press. He did not want the case tried in the newspapers before it was presented in court. Justified or not, I gave house-room to the impression that if/when the Court permitted Mrs. McCollum to be interviewed, that I was as likely as anyone else to get the scoop. Then seeking to co-ordinate my favorable impression of Judge Adams with the impression I had gained of an existing dogma of Ruby McCollum’s motive for slaying Dr. Adams so widespread in the locality, I pondered as to whether the Judge had lent his prestige to its acceptance. But if so, was it native to his spirit, or was he a captive of geographical emotions and tradition?

  There was abundant precedent for this mental query, the case of General Robert E. Lee being the most notable. This truly great military genius and greater of soul than as a soldier, hated the institution of slavery, and had freed his own slaves. He believed devoutly in the Union and regarded Secession as the ultimate death of the nation. Yet, when the struggle came, his decision was that he would go along with Virginia and his neighbors.

  From the instant minute that this matter occured to me, Judge Hal Adams became the foremost figure of interest to me in this trial. The slaying had been admitted by the defendant, and the degree only of her guilt was left to be decided by the trial. To me, the real drama was inherent in the reactions to the evidence presented, or allowed to be admitted by Judge Adams. There is an old southern saying to the effect that a man ain’t got no business pulling on britches unless or until he’s got guts enough to hold ’em up. Another saying that considers the strength and calibre of a man says, “The time done come when big britches got to fit Little Willie.” Could big britches fit Hal Adams, or to put it another way, could Hal Adams fit himself into big britches? [handwritten addition: Fate had issued the challenge to him.] My mind was entirely open. I would let the Judge furnish the answer.

  The confirmation for me that I was right in the impression that the Negroes of the locality were using protective coloration and concealing their own thought about the case lay in the fact that the closer the association had been with the McCollums, the more violent were their denunciations of Ruby. One example was furnished by Hall, the Negro undertaker. Rumor informed me that Sam McCollum’s money had set Hall up in business and though it was thoroughly established that Hall had also been on very intimate and confidential terms with the late Dr. Adams,—often driving the Doctor at night to his amorous rendezvous,—he could scarcely have felt as violent towards his benefactors, the McCollums, as he pretended. It was only natural for Hall to realize that he might be suspected of sympathy with Ruby because of past benefits, and thus he was giving himself a cat-bath to forestall possible retaliation from White Live Oak. That is, washing himself off with his tongue.

  I had the same impression concerning the janitor of the County Court-house. It was said that this Negro had been the McCollum yardman for twelve years. He had, during those years, enjoyed numerous favors from the McCollums. Yet, nobody could match his violent denunciation of Ruby nor his expressed hopes and prayers for her speedy execution. He was waiting for Judge Adams every morning when he arrived at the Court-house to carry in his brief-case or any other luggage that the Judge might have, and being most obsequious every moment, to the extent that the Judge publicly thanked him at the end of the trial. No one could blame him for looking after the comforts of the Judge, and certainly I do not, for Judge Adams appears to me to be a most kindly and considerate person, and easy to like. The motives of the janitor are under scrutiny here, and especially so when it is considered that this man had been an inmate of Raiford himself, so it is alleged, and it certainly would do him no harm to be on the good side of a County Judge when the police rapped on his door the next time. Rightly or wrongly, the janitor believed the Judge wanted such an expression from the Colored folks, and he was moved to furnish it with great enthusiasm. Nor do I censure the man for his behavior. I merely examine it as part of a pattern which I found. A fleeing away from fear.

  But in all fairness to this humble man, human nature cannot be ignored. The McCollums were wealthy and otherwise stood high in the community. These local Colored people were for the most part, little people, the kind of people, irrespective of race, who have only the earth as their memorial. With death, they go back to the ground to rejoin the countless millions of other nameless creatures who are remembered only by the things which grow in soil. There is ever a residue of resentment against the successful of the world. It has nothing at all to do with race. Thus from the beginning of time the most popular story is one in which the poor triumph over the more fortunate. Heaven, where the humble will be equal or superior to the powerful on earth; Dives and Lazarus; the Cinderella story; the peasant boy who wins the princess and with her, one half of the kingdom; Dick Whittington, Lord Mayor of London.3 So there was a certain amount of revengeful satisfaction in seeing Ruby, the high-cockalorum brought low. No longer could she stir their envy.

  And there was bound to be a certain amount of grim satisfaction on the part of many Negro men when it was found that Ruby had gotten into “bad trouble” by giving herself to a White man. This complaint has come down from slavery days, the advantage that White men have over Negro men with women. In a cafe with the jook-box playing at the top of its voice, the case was mentioned, and a tall man pleasuring himself with breaded pork chops and side dishes of collard greens and fried sweet potatoes snarled,

  “I ain’t got no sympathy for Ruby at all. All before, she wouldn’t even wipe her feet on nobody like us. If she just had to have herself a outside man, she could of got any kind she wanted right inside her own race. That’s one thing about our race, we’re just like a flower-garden, you can get any color from coal-scuttle blonde to pink-toed white.” (This is a very common boast made always when Negroes rail against miscegenation, not seeming to realize that by it, they are endorsing the very thing which is being denounced, for obviously if there had been no miscegenation, there could be nothing but black individuals among us.) “Naw, she had to go and have that White man, and when she knows so well how these White men don’t allow us no chance at all with their women. Colored women ought to be proud to stick to their own men and leave these White men alone.”

  “And more ’specially when they ought to know that White men ain’t no trouble at all. They can’t do nothing in the bed but praise the Lord. Nothing to ’em at all.”

  A loud guffaw of gloating laughter from all the men at this. The thought sort of evened things up.

  “We gets all we want for nothing, but they got to pay for it, and they had better, ’cause they sure can’t bring nobody to testify and neither sinners to repentance. Shucks!”

  Even louder laughter. But a tipsy woman (she would not have dared to speak had she been sober, or of a more discriminating type.)

  “Talk that you know and testify to that you done seen. Some of these here White men got lightning in their pants. In the ‘Be’ class, be there when you start and be there a long time after you done fell out.”

  In the shocked and enraged silence that followed this, the slattern must have jolted to a soberer state, for she added sheepishly, “That is, it could be. I wouldn’t know my own self.”

  “You better say ‘Joe’ ’cause you don’t know,” one man growled, giving expression to the emotions of his male hearers. “Tain’t a thing to the bear but his curly hair. Don’t you stand there and tell that lie that a White man can do with a woman what a Colored man can do. Oh, I reckon some of these trashy Nigger women who is after their money will lay up under ’em, like Ruby McCollum done, and moan and squall and cry to make ’em think they’re raising hell, but that’s only because of the spending-change the White man puts out. But everybody knows that a White man ain’t no trouble, not a damn bit, and any old nappy head that tells me they is in my hearing, is going to get a righteous head-stomping.”

  No female picked up the challenge, naturally, so the men took the floor and the occasion to give the matter a vimful “reading.” They poured out all the stored resentment of the centuries between 1619, when the first batch of Negro slaves were landed in the English colonies, to September 1952. This age-old hobby-horse was flogged along from Ginny-Gall to Diddy-Wah-Diddy. (Mythical places of Negro folklore reputedly a long way off. Like Zar, which is on the other side of Far.)

  In a way, but a limited way, these men had a point. However, by the measuring stick of history, which is the recording of human behavior, their contention had no standing for the simple reason that force was lacking to back it up. From the cave-man to the instant hour, usage has hallowed the rule that to the victor belongs the spoils, and the primest spoils are women. Perhaps when the millennium has arrived, and the lamb is sharing an apartment with the lion, some changes will be made.4 In fact, we will know that that blessed age has arrived when the males of every species relinquish the pick of the females to the weaker individuals. But it has not yet arrived, and the victor, whether the war be of a military or of an economic nature, takes his pick of the females, or to be more accurate, the females pick him.

  The men felt that this angle figured in the case, and it did to an extent, but nobody at all even hinted that there was any exchange of monies between Ruby McCollum and Dr. Adams. It was not that kind of an affair. But anyway, the scab of the age-old sore was scraped off and it oozed blood afresh.

  “I’m glad that Ruby killed him. He ought to of been satisfied with his own women. But he had to keep on messing around until he got killed. Good enough for him.”

  “Yep, Ruby shot him lightly and he died politely. If Ruby comes clear of this, I aim to buy her a brand new gun.”

  Then somebody became conscious of my presence in the place and the talk was turned off like a faucet. A voice demanded stewed new peanuts. This was a dish that I had never heard of, but found that it was well known fare in the area, fresh-dug peanuts shelled and cooked with side-meat or ham-hock like any other pea. The owner of the cafe snorted that he didn’t bother with no trashy grub like that.

  Then a woman moaned, “Poor Ruby is going to get the ’lectric chair. I seen it in a dream last night. I seen her with her head all shaved.”

  “Nobody didn’t tell me, but I heard that Ruby meant to kill Sam before she died.”

  “But she never kilt him. Appears to me like Sam just naturally scared hisself to death. You know how scared Sam was of White folks. He figured they might lynch him for what Ruby had done.”

  “Well, anyhow it was told to me that that wasn’t none of Sam’s gun she killed Dr. Adams with at all, ’cause Sam had done carried his gun out of the house more’n a week before the killing.”

  “Oh, you can hear anything except sinners praying for repentance. Let’s squat that rabbit and jump another one.”

  “I help you to say! Some folks around here must of been raised on mocking-bird eggs.” (There is a folk-belief that if a person eats a mockingbird egg, they can no longer keep a secret.)

  Vainly did I seek the witnesses for the Defense. There were none. Even the closest friends of the McCollums must have been persuaded that the risk was too great. The names of eight Negroes were added to the jury panel, seven of whom disqualified themselves as being friends of Dr. Adams. The eighth somehow seemed to have been overlooked until the jury box was filled.

  All this indicates the climate of the Ruby McCollum trial outside of the Court-house, and had bearing upon the trying of the case, or so it seemed to me.

  From my seat in the balcony on the east side of the building, I could get a good view of the court-room. It was clean and comfortable enough as court-rooms go. Provisions had been made for custom and comfort. Tobacco-chewing and snuff-dipping are common enough in the area not to be apologized for, so spittoons were handy in the official section. The Judge and jury had been taken care of that way.

  The substantial building had evidently been constructed before drinking fountains were common in public places, so the janitor presently came up the center aisle toting a bucket of ice water and balanced it on the corner of the railing enclosing the court officers. One glance told me that a man had bought the outfit, for the bucket was white enamel with a red rim around the top, and the dipper was white enamel, but with a dark blue handle. A woman would have seen to it that they matched. The janitor passed the bucket and dipper around to the jury when he thought that they wanted a drink, and also to court officers, but White spectators could go up and get a drink if they wanted it.

  I was in my seat as soon as the door was opened to spectators, a good hour before court set at ten o’clock. The main floor of the room began to fill immediately. The first to enter was four matrons. The[y] took seat[s] on the very front row. One brought a son about two years old. Another had her knitting along. A few rows back, a young woman had an infant child in her arms. It got to fretting and crying during a tense period in the trial and many people frowned at her, wondering why she did not take that fretting child out of there so they could hear better. When Judge Adams looked pointedly in her direction, she reluctantly rose and went out.

  But long before court set, eyes kept going to the door behind the railing through which both Judge Adams and Ruby McCollum must eventually enter. Bring her in and let them have their pleasure of her. It was plain that none doubted the conclusion of the trial. The uprising was going to be put down. The emotion rose like a fume from the lower floor.

  As the hour drew near, Judge Adams passed through the room from his office at the front of the building and exchanged pleasantries with friends in the audience and behind the rail. I could see that his presence was tantalizing, for everybody, including myself, was anxious for the business to begin. Visiting lawyers, including ex-Governor Caldwell, occupied seats on the right of the platform inside the railing and passed off the time with chat.5

  A side drama relieved the tedium somewhat. A. K. Black, state’s attorney for Suwannee County, was already there with the assistant state’s attorney, O. O. Edwards. Naturally they were attracting much interest on the occasion. Black is a short, plump man in a rumpled blue suit and with a bald spot on top of his head so perfectly round that it might be the tonsure of a monk. H[e] is not impressive in appearance, but a Negro seated behind me murmured, “Don’t let that sleepy look fool you. He’s just playing possum. He’s going to get Ruby unlessen her lawyer watches out right smart. That Black is a ‘getting fool.’ I done seen him at it.”