In this fifteen-line poem, he points specifically to the immense suffering of black people and the necessity of painting on a happy face as a survival tactic. In so doing, Dunbar challenges the plantation tradition, of which he had become a well-known participant. In short, he emphasizes that slaves, while they may have appeared happy and docile, were in reality paradigms of suffering and strength. This could have applied as well to the suffering that Dunbar no doubt observed during his own lifetime, certainly one of the harshest periods in history for African Americans in the United States.