Lipchitz, a Lithuanian-born Jewish artist residing in Paris, fled to the United States during World War II. In 1967 the Philadelphia Art Commission invited him to design a public sculpture for Thomas Paine Plaza, directly opposite City Hall.

The sculptor proposed a monument to the generational struggle to uphold democracy. His work shows men and women of various ages lifting one another toward the sky, straining to support an impossibly heavy waving flag.

Lipchitz died in 1973 and the Fairmount Park Art Association (now the Association for Public Art) completed the project three years later.