AUTHOR

C. Arthur Ellis

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C. Arthur Ellis, Jr. was born in the small North Florida town of Live Oak right after World War II. He holds master's degrees in medical physiology and English literature and a PhD in the humanities. He is married to Leslie Ellis, his wife of 53 years, and has two sons and 3 grandchildren. After his retirement from teaching and medical administration, Dr. Art Ellis turned to his favorite past-time of writing. Since he had always been fascinated with the hometown true-crime story of Ruby McCollum, he decided that this would be his first book. Ruby McCollum was a wealthy African-American woman who shot and killed her white physician and state senator elect lover, Dr. C. LeRoy Adams in 1952. As a first effort to explore the story of Ruby McCollum, Dr. Ellis discovered that the trial transcript was no longer in the Suwannee County courthouse and that portions of the microfilm record at the State of Florida archive were missing. After years of research, he managed to compile a close facsimile of the transcript from two different sources, annotated the transcript, and published several works on the Ruby McCollum story. He then donated a copy of his version of the transcript to the Florida Collection at the University of Florida where it is archived in the Smathers Library. His ten-year research effort of restoring the trial transcript also involved reviewing hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, interviewing many of the characters in the story, recording his own memories, including drawing a floor plan of Adams' office where the murder took place. He also commissioned over 50 oil paintings of the places and characters central to the Ruby McCollum story to preserve the "look" of this historical event for future generations. Finally, he documented information contributed by his father who worked with Dr. Adams at the Suwannee County hospital. For his work on Ruby McCollum, Dr. Ellis was a featured guest speaker at Miami Book Fair International, and was invited to speak on the Ruby McCollum story by LA Theatre Works on the anniversary of William Huie's investigative work on the same case. He has also been a featured guest speaker on the Ruby McCollum story at the Florida Historical Society and the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society. In 2014, Dr. Ellis worked with Ms. Ramona Ramdeen to complete a feature documentary on the Ruby McCollum story, entitled, CURTAIN OF SECRECY. In this film Dr. Ellis is joined by his wife, who offers her analysis of the characters of the story from her point of view as a forensic psychologist. Also, in the fall of 2014, Drs. Ellis appeared on A Crime to Remember in the season episode, The Shot Doctor, featuring the Ruby McCollum story. After completing his work on the Ruby McCollum story, Dr. Ellis visited friends in Live Oak who had read his book on the Ruby McCollum story and learned that there were two other murders in the county prior to the Ruby McCollum story, both of which were connected to bolita. The most famous of the murders was the drowning death of 15-year-old Willie James Howard whose crime was sending a Christmas card and a poem to a white girl. This research led to the publication of Blood on the Suwannee in 2020. Dr. Ellis and his wife became interested in the fundamentalist involvement in American politics because of their concern about how this interest group is attempting to erode individual freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, as well as distort and debase the true meaning of the Christian faith. Their research on this topic led to the publication of Bible Bullies: How Fundamentalists Got The Good Book So Wrong. Drs. Art and Leslie Ellis maintain that the pseudo-Christian far-right wing of the Republican party has used the Bible to abuse children and to bully identified out-groups, including women, members of non-Christian religions, the LGBT community and food stamp recipients, departing from the socially conscious message brought by Jesus. Dr. Ellis and his wife live between their home in Dalton, Georgia and their cabin in Ellijay, Georgia.