Zora Neale Hurston and The Trial of Ruby McCollum

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 http://www.rubymccollum.info.

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