In his graphic work, Hugo Gellert combined art and activism. Free Man's Duties I was one of 19 silkscreen prints in his series Century of the Common Man. In 1943, Gellert published a brochure of these images, accompanied by text from two speeches by Vice President Henry A. Wallace, and distributed them as a contribution to the war effort. In the Vice President's 1942 speech, "The Price of Free World Victory," he characterized World War II as a conflict between the slave states and the free world, and called all free people to unite and fight against oppressors abroad. This speech came to be identified by the phrase, "the century of the common man," inspiring Gellert's title for this series.

Free Man's Duties I depicts a woman worker taking up her duties to fill the labor shortage during the war. The large, flat areas of bold color are evidence of the silkscreen method, a printing process based on stenciling in which color is forced through unmasked parts of a screen onto the paper beneath. Each color requires its own screen, and must be applied separately. In this case, six screens were used—one for black, plus five additional screens, one for each color.