Recent artists often conceal the meanings of their artworks under layers of opacity, in order to allow for the greatest number of interpretations—Bessie Harvey's Cross Bearers stands out, by contrast, because the artist confronts us directly with an allegory and a specific spiritual message.

In particular, her work draws from the deepest depths of the associations between monotheism and ancient Egyptian sources, such as the idea of a scale that weighs the soul as it moves into the spirit world. According to Harvey, if you are a believer, your soul is destined for eternal life, and if you aren't, well, it won't be good...unless you repent. Although this rhetoric goes back much longer than two thousand years, Harvey is specifically referring to belief in the messianic character of Jesus of Nazareth. For her, this is the qualifying factor, although her images and ideas take their influence from older traditions. In particular, there is an echo of African practices which survived the transatlantic slave trade: as D'Angelo sings, "She done worked a root."

Standing at about the average height of a man in the U.S., the Cross Bearers is one of Harvey's largest, most detailed works. Like the famous crypt in the Capuchin friary, Cross Bearers is a stern warning: "According to the artist, the vines covering the base represent chains in which unbelievers are bound without hope...Harvey explains that the nail in the center of the cross 'represents the pain of the believer...because of the unbeliever…" Pretty intense!

At the top of the sculpture is a phoenix, which evokes the idea of rebirth through hardship. According to Carol Falvo Heffernan, the origin of the Christian phoenix story is connected to ancient African sources, including the Egyptian Benu bird, as well as metaphors for a woman's first period.

During her childhood, for economic reasons, Harvey had to make her own toys out of twigs and branches. She was married at fourteen and had 11 children by the time she was 35. "I didn’t really become human until my youngest was half-grown," she explained. By "human," it seems that she means someone who thinks about thriving, not just surviving, and perhaps someone who thinks about the unseen, someone who considers time in both the long and short-term formats. Harvey is like the healer at the very end of Toni Morrison's A Mercy who exposes the main character to the sun, "sunsmacking" her for a treatment: she knows how to draw upon the resources of the earth to make her work. Part of her practice is a faith in the animacy of plants and minerals: "I have watched trees when they pray," Harvey says poetically.