Grubbs traces the plight of Southern tenant cotton farmers, both black and white, and the effort to provide tenant farmers with job security and financial stability through unionization. The book begins with the economic and agricultural fallout of the Civil War and on to the movement's initial organization, the New Deal, and efforts to join the AFL-CIO. In 1934 two young Socialists organized the Southern Tenants Farmers Union (STFU) near the town of Tyronza, Arkansas, in order to gain fair wages for tenant farmers who were kept in perpetual destitution.

This is a good book about agricultural labor, even if it can be a convoluted read due to its inherent political complexity. "Cry from the Cotton..." is well-researched and copiously noted. Grubbs has used a variety of sources, from government documents, local and union newspapers and magazine articles, to oral interviews, telegrams, and the STFU papers (housed at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill).