When I Lay My Burdens Down addresses the end of life, when, as some believe, one sheds the physical body and earthly cares, and the soul is set free. Despite the figure's abstracted anatomy, Thornton Dial convincingly conveys the presence of a human being bent over by a great burden, reaching backwards to drop a work tool. Dial's title for this work is drawn from a song popularized in 1956 by the singer Odetta, who was sometimes called the "voice of the Civil Rights movement." Although the lyrics -"Glory, glory, hallelujah, / When I lay my burden down"- directly address death, they also held resonant Civil Rights associations for African American people who had labored under the burdens of Jim Crow segregation.