This broadside is both a personal genealogical chart and a pictorial history of African American advancement. Symbols of national government, vignettes of an antebellum slave auction, cotton picking, and under-resourced schools on the left are contrasted with postwar scenes of free communities, industrial jobs, and prosperous schools on the right. 

The portraits of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, educator Lucy C. Laney, and lawyer Judson Lyons, grouped with Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, highlight the national symbols of human rights and civil rights for African Americans. 

The two scenes at the bottom show the African American Ninth and Tenth Cavalries and the Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Colored Infantries as they crucially assist the Rough Riders in the key Cuban battles of the War of 1898. These images make a declarative statement for African American honor and belonging to the nation.