You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwanee River

Filmmaker John Cork's grim documentary tells an unusual story of racial injustice, with many a surprising development extending over two decades. In 1952, Ruby McCollum, a well-educated and relatively affluent African-American mother of four in Live Oak, FL, shot and killed Dr. Clifford Leroy Adams in his own office. The murder of Adams, a white man, was officially tied to an argument over a $116 medical bill, and McCollum stood trial before an all-white jury and judge. McCollum's attorney did not fight the charge but rather the perceived motive, arguing that McCollum did not kill Adams over a bill, but because he had raped her repeatedly and fathered a child by her. Most of this evidence was ruled inadmissible by the judge, who even went so far as to order the jury not to look at the child when she was in the courtroom. McCollum was found guilty and sentenced to be executed, but her story became even more complex with the entrance of two dogged journalists (one being Zora Neale Hurston) whose investigations were stymied by the same judge. Combining archival materials with interviews of many people familiar with the case (including one of the jurors, and members of McCollum's family), You Belong to Me is a disturbing story of race and justice in the Jim Crow-era American South. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)