Standing in the Need of Prayer
1944
Charcoal study on artist’s paper
9 ½” x 12 ⅛”
Black-and-white lithograph
10" x 13" plate
Here is a war-related print interpretation of the spiritual of the same name, which garnered positive acclaim from art critics. Drama swirls around the central figure, an African American war hero, standing on a wooden raft facing a turbulent sea. His hands are clasped over his head in prayer as he summons angels from the city of Heaven, who row down in a lifeboat to rescue him. In her accompanying notes, Rose writes of the black soldier’s unwavering spiritual belief and how that bolsters him in times of challenge and despair:
Like all other spirituals, this song voices a basic truth of life that none of us can escape. White and black, yellow and red and brown, all need and ask, each in their own peculiar fashion, for the guidance of the spirit. Faith is a great power; on it are built religions and philosophies, and systems of education and of government. The colored man has faith that his God will take care of him. This Negro soldier, threatened by the surge and thunder of the ocean, is using his greatest power, the prayer of faith. In the distance, angels with a lifeboat are coming miraculously to save him.
