"Climbing the Ladder of Success" by Michael Ray Charles is a provocative work rendered in acrylic latex, stain, and copper penny on paper, materials that evoke the gritty, weathered aesthetic central to the artist's practice. Charles employs the visual language of early American advertising and minstrel imagery to critically examine race, ambition, and the myth of upward mobility in the United States. The incorporation of a copper penny adds a charged layer of symbolism, referencing both economic aspiration and the dehumanizing history embedded in American currency and commerce.