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The speaker talks to her son about the challenges of her own life and anticipates the challenges he will face in his. In this way, the poem follows a structure that moves from the past to the future. The speaker begins with her own experiences. For approximately one-third of the poem, she describes how the “staircase” that she’s climbed her entire life has been full of “tacks,” “splinters,” and “boards torn up” (lines 3, 4, and 5). She then spends the next third of the poem insisting that, regardless of these many obstacles, she has persisted in her climb—even, at times, “goin’ in the dark / Where there ain’t been no light” (lines 12–13). About two-thirds of the way through the poem, the speaker addresses her son directly and gives him the following advice (lines 14–17):

     So boy, don’t you turn back.
     Don’t you set down on the steps
     ’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
     Don’t you fall now—

Here, she turns away from her past experience and anticipates her son’s future. As a Black male growing up in America, he will inevitably face similar kinds of obstacles. But his mother encourages him to persist even when the going gets tough, and she commits herself to doing the same: “I’se still goin’, honey, / I’se still climbin’” (lines 18–19).

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