The Silencing of Ruby McCollum

The Silencing of Ruby McCollum:  Race, Class, and Gender in the South by Tammy Evans  (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 2006).  Evans is an adjunct professor of composition at the University of Miami's Bradenton campus.

Silencing refutes the carefully constructed public memory of one of the most famous biracial murders in the U.S.  In 1952, Ruby McCollum, an African American housewife, drove to the office of Dr. C. LeRoy Adams, beloved white physician in the segregated town of Live Oak, Florida, and gunned down the doctor. 

"This groundbreaking work reads like a murder mystery, only in this case what has been killed is our American integrity and the right of an individual to a fair trial.  Evans has finally addressed the pervasive silence that distorts, fragments, and threatens to bury the history of so many southern places and people." -- Rebecca Mark, Tulane University

Posted by Trisha Simonds