This short is based on Chester Himes’s novel Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965) and its adaptation for the screen by Ossie Davis in 1970. The cotton in the novel and film comes from the region around Columbus, Mississippi. Shot in noir-style, the film focuses on the scene when detectives Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones interrogate Lo-Boy, an artist/hustler, about the event around the demise of his friend Early Riser.