The correct answer to this open question is the following.
What is in the hand of the man standing in the middle of the painting above is a voting ballot.
This kind of picture is an example of the form of art developed during the Harlem Renaissance, in the Harlem neighborhood, New York City during the 1920s. Harlem artists used art as a way to transmit ideas of liberty, justice, and equality. Artists like Jacob Lawrence created pieces of art like the example above, in which he tried to convey the idea of equality for African Americans and their right to decide.