Hughes’s poem focuses on major moments of success, innovation, and promise in history to trace the legacy of his people. Hughes establishes this early in the poem with the image of human blood in human veins: Just as human blood flows through the body, the rivers flow through time, and just as all humans share the same blood, these rivers share the same waters. The imagery draws a connection between the earliest civilizations in Asia and the modern world in North America by showing how, just like the different parts of a river, all experience is connected in some way.

Hughes also focuses on positive imagery to celebrate the lineage he is identifying. He does not talk about slavery, racism, segregation, or the other negative experiences imposed upon Black people during his time. While such suffering is connoted by the geographic locations and the language in the poem, it is not the poem’s focus. Instead, Hughes highlights the great successes of his lineage: From the emergence of agriculture and civilization in Mesopotamia to the raising of the pyramids in Egypt to the abolition of slavery in the 1800s, he focuses on the points in the river that left lasting positive impacts on the present.