Zora Neale Hurston and The Trial of Ruby McCollum

In 1952, Zora Neale Hurston covere the trial of Ruby McCollum, a wealthy "colored" woman who murdered her white senator-elect lover. Hurston wrote that this was a landmark trial, marking the first time that a woman of color was allowed to witness to the paternity of her child by a white man who forced himself upon her.

Trinity, FL (PRWEB) February 5, 2007 -- Zora Neale Hurston, the famous cultural anthropologist and celebrated writer of the Harlem Renaissance, traveled extensively throughout the Antebellum, Segregationist South collecting African American folktales that traced their roots back to Africa.

In the 1930s, Hurston encountered a practice in the post-Civil War Segregationist South known as "paramour rights," referring to the practice of White men taking Colored women as their mistresses and forcing them to have children. In 1952, some 20 years later, The Pittsburgh Courier offered Hurston the opportunity to cover the murder trial of Ruby McCollum, a wealthy African American wife who shot and killed her White physician and senator-elect lover in what Hurston believed to be an instance of paramour rights.

Over half a century later, readers now have the opportunity to own a fully color illustrated presentation of Ruby McCollum story as Hurston saw it, complete with reproductions of oil paintings that include a portrayal of the courtroom scene where Hurston sat in the segregated balcony of the Suwannee County courthouse during the trial.

More information and book details at www.rubymccollum.info.

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