Ruth Cobb Brice

The Knox County School District hired Brice in 1928 to teach art at Heiskell Elementary School, then a public school for Black children. She later taught at Maynard Elementary in Mechanicsville.

Brice's interest in art blossomed more fully while studying at Knoxville College during the mid-1930's. When she ad the opportunity, she studied with professional artists in Washington, D.C.

In the 1940’s, she began writing poetry under the pseudonym Rachel Jane McKinney. In 1949 she published a poetry booklet called The Wrong Slant. While very short, the booklet gives her a claim to be Knoxville’s first Black female author. On her business card she described herself as "poetess and lecturer".

By 1953, she was exhibiting her artwork in Knoxville, and over the next two decades, she became a familiar face in local galleries.

Brice once lived on East Knoxville’s South Georgia Street, near the urban section know as the Bottom. A neighbor and friend, noted historian Robert Booker, recalled her as a prolific artist. She later lived on Groner Driver in the Morningside area. She retired after 47 years of teaching, and devoted her life more fully to art. In 1968, Brice became the first Black artist to join the invitation-only Knoxville Watercolor Society.

Brice's work was shown across the country, from Omaha, Nebraska, to New York City, as well as locally at Knoxville College, which offered an exhibit of her work in 1967; the University of Tennessee; ad Dulin Gallery of Art. Near the end of her life, she painted two notable murals for East Tennessee Children's Hospital in 1970.

She died in 1971 and is buried in Crestview Cemetery in the West View community. The Beck Cultural Exchange Center organized a retrospective exhibition of 50 of her works in 1985, and still keeps several of her works in its permanent collection.