WEST WALL

THE FOUNDING BLACK FAMILIES OF AMERICA

Nearly one hundred years old, this collection of portraits was painted by Ruth Starr Rose (1887-1965) who lived fewer than twenty miles from here. Those portrayed possess a level of self awareness that reveals a solid sense of identity. They felt secure in the quiet knowledge that they descended from some of America’s first black abolitionists including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Ross Tubman, James Pennington, and William Still. People who built this country, and therefore represent members of the Founding Black Families of America. 

Within The Water’s Edge Museum collection, the genuine manner of portraying individuals with an inherent dignity and a rich interior life eschewed racist stereotypes and exaggerated gestures typical of its day. This approach to art visualized people and cultures that existed beyond America’s white mainstream with a subtlety, positivity, and documentary quality unmatched by others in the early twentieth century.

The preparatory sketches, print takes, correspondence, and written notes reveal much more than was heretofore known about the creative process of honoring persons of color in daily life, and struggles with the societal restrictions of the time. This assemblage of paintings, lithographs, drawings, notes, literature, and music is unique, and offers a singularly extensive chronicle of the daily lives of early twentieth-century people of color in Maryland.

People say that I’m from one of Maryland’s founding families. I hope that this exhibition makes the case that we should start extending those honorary titles to some African American families. America didn’t just happen because a bunch of white men wrote the Declaration of Independence. Black families founded this country too.

– Quote by Museum Founder, Dr. Barbara Paca, O.B.E., The Baltimore Sun, 

“A Celebration of Dignity and Beauty through Art,” Mary Carole McCauley, October 11, 2015.

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