THE WOMAN IN THE SUWANNEE JAIL

Again (Eddie Slovik, Mamie Stover) an individual becomes an issue, and the little known case of Ruby McCollum which was walled off in silence as a ""community problem"" provides a dramatic defense which is fundamentally an attack against discrimination. Ruby McCollum, the well-educated, well-behaved wife of a Negro numbers banker who earned $50,000 a year, walked into the office of Dr. Clifford LeRoy Adams, a local legend as the ""pore man's friend"", and shot him, allegedly because he'd been dunning her. In the trial which followed, none of the more pertinent facts were heard: that Adams had used his practice as a means to secure political power; that he was involved in all kinds of other malpractices- from milking the V.A. to health insurance plans; that he -- while maintaining a white woman along with his wife- had also fathered Ruby's last child and had gotten her pregnant again and put her on dope; that she'd been the victim of repeated nervous depressions. In Huie's fight against a Judge also named Adams, a ""cracker character"" who refused him ""access"" in his attempt to get a new trial, had him jailed for criminal contempt, as well as in the accumulation of evidence of the facts in this case- there is a quod erat demonstrandum of suppression and injustice and intolerance. It's an aroused and arresting narrative.