Christopher Columbus is looking off into the distance, consulting a map, oblivious to an important part of the outcomes of his "discovery" of America.

In history painting a skeleton or skull is known as a memento mori: a reminder of the fleeting nature of life and the guarantee of death. This skeleton might represent the many lives lost to slavery as well as the staggering loss of life due to the introduction of new diseases during colonization that especially decimated Indigenous populations.

Abraham Lincoln is positioned between two Black figures—a man on rural ground with no shirt bearing the burden of a heavy load and a man against an urban background wearing a suit and tie with a noose around his neck. Underrepresented in historical narratives, these are two extremes of Black experiences before and after the Emancipation Proclamation.

The decades following the First World War saw one of the largest demographic shifts in United States history as African Americans relocated from the rural South to the industrial North during The Great Migration. The barriers to integrating into urban life were high and the impact of this exodus on the aspirations and struggles of Black communities was wide reaching.