An eighth-generation Virginian, the Social Realist artist Robert Gwathmey often portrayed the struggles and dignity of poor, working-class families in the rural American South. Many of these families were trapped in the racist and corrupt sharecropping system, in which mostly white landlords would advance their landless Black tenants farming supplies every year in return for a future share of the harvested crops—but would later cheat them to perpetuate their exploitation.

"Cotton Picker" depicts a Black laborer kneeling to pick bright white cotton under a sweltering red sky. The thorny plants, one of the many things that made picking cotton a difficult job, suggest symbols of religious martyrdom such as Christ’s crown of thorns. The worker’s sinewy arms reveal an inner strength forged by hardship. However, a yellow road sign on the horizon with an upward-pointing black arrow, indicating a dead end, suggests that the only escape from this job may lie in the next life.