Ruth Starr Rose, Mock-up for a Book on African American Spirituals
Ruth Starr Rose
Mock-up for a Book on African American Spirituals, second version, ca. 1951
14 1/2" x 17”
Artist Ruth Starr Rose firmly believed that her best work was done on the Eastern Shore and recognized that her studies of Negro spirituals served as valuable cultural documentation of an underrepresented American art form. She envisioned a hybrid book featuring her lithographs inspired by African American spirituals with a design of the words and musical notes arranged on each page. She entered into a long negotiation with the Viking Press to realize this vision, even writing to an art critic friend in New York that the publisher intended to engage Paul Robeson to write the introduction to her book. Unfortunately, the book was never produced. Exorbitant printing costs led to the rejection of the publication. Unfazed, she worked with an art book publisher in New York from 1951 to 1959 in another attempt to publish the book on spirituals. However, the expense of printing the artwork continued to be a stumbling block, and the project was reluctantly abandoned.
Miraculously, the mock-up of her book was discovered. The layout for All God’s Chilluns Got Shoes displays her unique way of telling the story. A collage: The congregation’s vision through a two-dimensional print, lyrics (exactly as the church sang them), and musical notes with a brief history of each spiritual artistically arranged on the page.