The New Deal artwork was produced under the early Public Works of Art Project and later installed in a courtyard at the Main Interior Building in Washington, D.C.

This sculpture appeared in a Corcoran Gallery exhibition of PWAP artworks in Washington, D.C. President and Mrs. Roosevelt attended the gala opening of the show on Tuesday, April 24, 1934.

Edward A. Jewell, the New York Times art critic, called Negro Mother and Child "the exhibition's one outstanding piece of sculpture...a work of remarkable insight and plastic strength.

The statue is located at the east end of the cafeteria courtyard and stands atop a serpentine marble base.

[4] According to Artists on the left: American artists and the Communist movement, 1926-1956:[2] ...not only did Glickman handle the figures in a way that connotes dignity within poverty, the intimation of common humanity that classicism brings with it makes the sculpture speak powerful against the injustice of a situation in which some went without shoes because of color and class.In 2011 the Washington Post mentioned Negro Mother and Child amongst a handful of other public artworks in the national capital city that "flesh out the story of the nation" with representations of the African-American experience.